She was awarded her doctorate for the thesis 'Concord and Martyrdom: Gender, Community, and the Uses of Christian Perfection in Late Antiquity' from the Department of the Study of Religion, Princeton University, in 1992.

[5] Cooper held a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship (2012–15) for a project on 'The Early Christian Martyr Acts: A New Approach to Ancient Heroes of Resistance'.

[16] Band of Angels was reviewed in the New Statesman, which said: "Her book is characterised by a scholarly seriousness and the disarmingly unapologetic way she links the personal, the political and the institutional.

This fine book, in other words, left me wondering whether Prof Cooper wasn’t having her faith claims and eating them.

"[20] Cooper was shortlisted for the 2023 Cundill History Prize for Queens of a Fallen World: The Lost women of Augustine’s Confessions.