Lyn Loffland is an American sociologist who received her Ph.D. from the University of California at San Francisco. She worked as a social worker early in her professional career and later taught sociology at the University of California at Davis. She is best known for her work on the study of human relations in urban society. Her now classic study, "A World of Strangers" (1973), stressed the importance of spatial arrangements for human communication and interaction in cities.