Naomi Stead is an architectural academic, scholar and critic, based in Melbourne, Australia. She is currently the Director of the Design and Creative Practice Enabling Capability Platform at RMIT University, Australia.
Early years and education Naomi Stead was born in February 1975 and grew up in Adelaide, South Australia. She studied architecture at the Louise Laybourne School of Architecture, University of South Australia, graduating with a Bachelor of Architecture with first class honours in 1998. Stead's PhD, ‘On the Object of the Museum and its Architecture’, was conferred by The University of Queensland in 2004. The Project, supervised by John Macarthur and Antony Moulis, examined recent developments in museum architecture, with particular reference to Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum (Berlin) and the National Museum of Australia (Canberra) designed by ARM.
Academic career Stead began her academic career at the University of Technology, Sydney (2001–2009) and became a research fellow at the Research Centre ATCH (Architecture Theory Criticism History), University of Queensland in 2009, later becoming a senior research fellow. In 2015 she took up an academic position as Associate Professor at the School of Architecture, University of Queensland. In 2017, Stead joined Monash University's Department of Architecture and was Head of Department from 2018 to 2020. She left Monash early in 2022 to take up a research leadership role at RMIT University, as Director of the Design and Creative Practice Enabling Capability Platform, where her job is to encourage and enable interdisciplinary research that has high impact and benefit to people and planet, between and beyond the design fields. Stead has also undertaken a number of research fellowships, including Postdoctoral Fellow, Advanced Cultural Studies Institute of Sweden, Linkoping University (October 2007 – February 2008), and Honorary Visiting Scholar, School of Architecture, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium (June – December 2005). She was visiting fellow in Architectural Theory at TU Delft, the Netherlands, in April 2022. Stead describes her academic research as engaged with the following areas:
the history, theory and writing of architectural criticism; experimental writing in architecture; representations of architects and architecture in popular media the material culture of the architectural workplace; visual sociology in architecture; gender equity in architectural practice; feminist architecture theory; women in architecture; urban cultural geography and walking as an aesthetic practice; tourist culture in cities work-related wellbeing amongst architects and architecture students; work cultures and professional identity in architecture [NS1] thing theory, artefactuality, and objecthood in architecture; miniaturisation in architecture; Stead was a researcher with John Macarthur and Deborah van der Plaat on the project The Cultural Logic of Queensland Architecture: Place, Taste and Economy.
Equity and Diversity in the Australian Architecture Profession: women, work and leadership Stead initiated and led the Australian Research Council funded project Equity and Diversity in the Australian Architecture Profession: Women, Work and Leadership (2011–2014). This involved eight researchers – Stead, Karen Burns, Justine Clark, Gill Matthewson, Amanda Roan, Gillian Whitehouse, Julie Willis and Sandra Kaji-O'Grady – and sought map women’s participation in the architectural profession in Australia, to understand why women are under-represented at senior management level, and to identify concrete strategies for change. The project resulted in scholarly publications and the founding of the advocacy group Parlour: women, equity, architecture. This also led to the Parlour Guides to Equitable Practice and the Australian Institute of Architects Gender Equity Policy.
Architectural Work Cultures: professional identity, education and wellbeing Stead initiated and leads the Australian Research council funded research project Architectural Work Cultures: Professional identity, education and wellbeing (2020-2023). Known more commonly as the Wellbeing of Architects project, this is a comprehensive, three-year programme of research, bringing together researchers and educators, practices and professional organisations to investigate the wellbeing of people working in and studying architecture. Ultimately the project will develop tailored resources to contribute to greater wellbeing for these groups. This is the first major Australian study to use interdisciplinary, qualitative and quantitative methods to question how workplace cultures and professional identity affect mental wellbeing in architecture – and thus lay the foundations for practical improvements in the future. Collaborators include architecture researchers Maryam Gusheh, Byron Kinnaird and Kirsten Orr, and collaborators from the Monash University Department of Management, Julie Wolfram Cox, Brian Cooper and Tracey Shea.
Architectural criticism Stead is currently the architecture critic for the Australian national weekly newspaper The Saturday Paper. Her architectural criticism has been published in a wide range of professional journals and magazines, including Architecture Australia, Artichoke, Monument, Architecture Review Australia, Pol Oxygen and [Inside] Australian Design Review. She was a contributing editor to Architecture Australia from 2003 to 2012, architecture columnist for The Conversation in 2016–2017 and is a regular columnist for Places journal. Stead has also written scholarly work on the history and future of architectural criticism and edited the anthology Semi-detached: Writing, representation and criticism in architecture (2012).
Contributions to public and academic culture Stead contributes to public and academic culture in a range of ways. She was an expert member of the National Committee for Gender Equity of the Australian Institute of Architects. She has edited academic journals, including Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, with Prof Johan Fornas and Dr Martin Fredriksson; Architectural Theory Review, with Dr Lee Stickells and Prof Michael Tawa (2011 – 2014), and was on the Executive Committee of the Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ) from 2003 to 2005, and elected SAHANZ President from 2017-2019. Stead has also convened and co-convened a number of conferences. These include:
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