Naomi Stead

Professor Naomi Stead is Director of the Design and Creative Practice Enabling Capability Platform at RMIT. With a long commitment to research-based advocacy in architecture, she was a co-founder of Parlour – now an internationally-recognized organization advocating for gender equity in the profession – and led the initial Australian Research Council project which underpinned it. More recently she led a major investigation of mental health and wellbeing among architecture students and practitioners. She has co-edited six books, including the award-winning Speaking of Buildings: Oral History in Architectural Research (Princeton Architectural Press 2019) with Janina Gosseye and Deborah van der Plaat; and After the Australian Ugliness (NGV & Thames and Hudson, 2020) with Tom Lee, Ewan McEoin, and Megan Patty. She was Contributing Editor to Architecture Australia (2005-2009), Editor of Architectural Theory Review (2011-2013), President of the Society of Architectural Historians of Australia & New Zealand (2017-2019), Head of Architecture at Monash University (2018-2020), and a Board Member of Open House Melbourne (2020-2023). She is widely published as an architecture critic – including currently for The Saturday Paper. In 2023 she was (state) winner of the Bates Smart Award for Architecture in the Media. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture (UniSA) and a PhD (UQ).