She was instrumental in establishing in 1994 the Reggae Studies Unit at the University of the West Indies, Mona, which has hosted numerous public lectures and symposiums featuring reggae/dancehall artists and other practitioners in the music industry in Jamaica and internationally such as Lady Saw, Vybz Kartel, Bounty Killer, Tony Rebel, Ninjaman, Louise Frazer-Bennett, Christine Hewett, Tanya Stephens, Gentleman and Queen Ifrica. Cooper founded the annual Bob Marley Lecture in 1997. The Reggae Studies Unit has also convened academic conferences, including in 2008 the Global Reggae Conference, the plenary papers for which are collected in "Global Reggae" (2012), edited by Cooper and published by the University of the West Indies Press. With Dr Eleanor Wint, Cooper co-edited "Bob Marley: The Man and His Music" (2003), a selection of papers presented at the 1995 symposium that marked the reggae icon's 50th birthday.