In 1978, she received a two-year graduate diploma from the Film Unit of the Slade School of Fine Arts at University College, London.

She has served as editor or co-editor for several academic journals and book series, including October (1981–1992) and Umbr(a), which she co-founded.

[3] Copjec has been a strong proponent of the power of psychoanalytic theory, especially as articulated by Jacques Lacan and in reference to film study, as she noted in a set of email interviews in 2014–2014, just before her move to Brown University: I find that from my background in psychoanalysis with its singular arsenal of concepts – the unconscious, drive, fantasy, jouissance, repression, disavowal, foreclosure, and so on – I ask different kinds of questions, look for different sets of details or notice their absence than someone without a Freudian/Lacanian perspective.

[4]In that same set of interviews, she marks her psychoanalytic position as distinct from the premises of gender theory: Much of my current work is focused on salvaging sex and sexual difference (as they are understood by Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis) from the threat of extinction.

This has lead [sic] me to try to rearticulate a robust notion of "group psychology" or "community" and to oppose what is called "gender theory," a phenomenon that emerged in the 80s not only in the West but also in the Islamic world and that sets as its goal the elimination of sexual difference.