Linda N. Groat

Linda N. Groat is an American scholar of architecture and a professor at the University of Michigan's Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Her work focuses on architectural research methods, environmental psychology, and issues related to gender and minority representation in the field of architecture. Her work has been published in Journal of Architectural Education, Journal of Environmental Psychology and Progressive Architecture. She is known for her books Architectural Research Methods and The Routledge companion to games in architecture and urban planning: tools for design, teaching, and research.

She was inducted into College of Distinguished Professors of Architecture by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.

Education Groat earned a Master of Arts in Teaching from Yale University and a Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts. She later completed a Master of Science and a Ph.D. in Environmental Psychology at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom.

Academic career Groat began her academic career in 1980 as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she later became Associate Professor. In 1987, she joined the University of Michigan's College of Architecture and Urban Planning as an Associate Professor of Architecture.

In 1999, Groat was promoted to full Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan, where she has remained a faculty member in the A. Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. From 1974 to 1977, she was a designer with McCue Boone Tomsick Architects in San Francisco and later served as a design research consultant with Kaplan/McLaughlin/Diaz Architects (1979–1980). and education, focusing on both empirical and qualitative methodologies. The book is used in architecture programs and has been translated into multiple languages. She also edited Giving Places Meaning (Academic Press, 1995) and has contributed to volumes addressing research, pedagogy, and participatory design.

Groat has written extensively on gender equity in the field of architectural academia. Alongside Sherry Ahrentzen, she co-authored the 1992 essay "Rethinking Architectural Education: Patriarchal Conventions & Alternative Visions from the Perspectives of Women Faculty," which has been cited in studies of diversity and inclusion in architectural education.

Her publications appeared both in academic journals and professional outlets, with articles appearing in scholarly journals such as the Journal of Environmental Psychology as well as in professional outlets including Architecture and Progressive Architecture. She is co-editor, with Marta Brković Dodig, of The Routledge Companion to Games in Architecture and Urban Planning: Tools for Design, Teaching and Research (Routledge, 2020).

Awards In 1998, Groat received the Sarah Goddard Power Award from the University of Michigan for her work on gender equity in higher education.

Groat was inducted in 2023 into the College of Distinguished Professors of Architecture by the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA).

Selected publications Books and chapters

Journal articles