Research Funding Opportunities

The Iowa History Dissertation Fellowship and the Research Grant for Authors provide support for historical research on topics related to Iowa history.

Iowa History Dissertation Fellows

The Iowa History Dissertation Fellowship supports the next generation of Iowa historians by providing fellowships to advanced graduate students working on dissertations that engage with any aspect of Iowa history. Dissertations do not need to focus exclusively on Iowa history but should demonstrate substantial engagement with Iowa history. In addition to funding, fellows work closely with the Editor of the Annals of Iowa to hone their writing and research throughout the academic year, and at the conclusion of the fellowship, fellows meet in Des Moines to present their work for other fellows, State Historical Society of Iowa staff, and an invited commenter.

Nathan Chaplin

Chaplin is a PhD candidate studying global Midwestern history at the University of Iowa. His work centers on scientific exchanges between Latin Americans and Midwesterners during the 19th and 20th century. He has presented at the OAH Conference on American History and the MHA Midwestern History Conference and conducted research through the United States and Nicaragua.

His dissertation explores the relationships between Midwestern and Nicaraguan elites during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, paying special attention to the prominent roles played by civil engineers, physicians, and academics. Throughout this period, scientists from both regions collaborated on large-scale infrastructure projects, including railway systems, hospitals, and a transisthmian canal, in the process creating new and national identities. 

Andrew Varsanyi

Andrew Varsanyi is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, studying the history of populism in the United States with a focus on Great Plains farmers' reform movements.

"Authorized Agent: Populism, Cooperatives, and Entrepreneurship in the Gilded Age" traces the unique social networks of nineteenth-century American populist reform movements through one of the movement's principal leaders, Alonzo Wardall. In cataloging the meetings and events Wardall attended to understand and map the social dynamics within the populist political and business works, this project recovers forty years of relationships among the farmers, union members, suffragists, and prohibitionists who made up a complex North American reform network. 

Notable Work from Research Grant for Authors recipients

Each year, the State Historical Society of Iowa awards up to 12 grants to historians working on new projects in Iowa history. Over 100 grant recipients have published their projects in the Annals of Iowa, and many continue to be active participants in programs.

Past Programs

Nathan Tye
Iowa History 101: Hopping Freights and Harvesting Grain with Hobos in Iowa, 1870s-1910s
Read Tye's Annals Article, "A Flight of Alien, Unclean Birds": The Mobility of Hobo Labor in Iowa 1870s-1910s"

H. Roger Grant
Iowa History 101: Twilight cluster: A Western Iowa Railroad Phenomenon
Read Grant's Annals Article, "Atlantic Northern & Southern An Iowa Twilight Railroad"

Brian Ingrassia
Iowa History 101: Sports for the Liberal Arts: Reimagining Iowa’s Small Colleges, 1921-1939
Read Ingrassia’s Annals article, “Sports for the Liberal Arts”

Emily Prifogle
Iowa History 101: The Myth and Realities of Country Lawyers in Iowa and the Midwest
Read Prifogle’s Annals article, “Winks, Whispers, and Prosecutorial Discretion in Rural Iowa, 1925-1928”

Kevin T. Mason
Winner of 2022 Throne/Aldrich Award
Iowa History 101: Inkpaduta in Iowa: Dakota Decline, Dispossession, and Erasure
Read Mason’s Annals article, “Inkpaduta in Iowa”

Sarah Johnson
Iowa History 101: Rural Free Delivery, Parcel Post and Responses to Mail Order Commerce in Iowa