An EconoTimes perspective

Naomi Stead

Director of the Design and Creative Practice Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT, RMIT University

Director of the Design and Creative Practice Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT, RMIT University 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).