Michael Hooper

Michael Hooper is a Ph.D. student in IPER, a graduate student in the Department of Political Science, and a Fellow in the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation.  He joined IPER after working for five years with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in East Africa and New York.  During three years spent at UN Headquarters, he directed the research and advocacy programs of a major partnership on poverty reduction and biodiversity conservation and led the organization’s efforts to document local best practice in these areas.  Prior to his posting in New York, he worked with UNDP in Nairobi and spent a year on secondment to the Kenya Ministry of Planning and National Development.  He remains affiliated with UNDP, serving as a member of the Technical Advisory Committee for the UN’s Equator Prize.  In addition to his prior work with the UN, Michael also worked in London with a regulatory agency of the UK government and with a management research project jointly led by McKinsey & Co. and the London School of Economics.

Michael spent his first year of university at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei on a Pacific Rim Scholarship from the Government of British Columbia.  He then attended McGill University in Montreal, where he earned the B.Sc. in Biology in 1997 and the M.Sc. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in 1999.  He returned to graduate school following his time in Kenya, earning the M.C.P. in Urban Studies and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003.  Building on his work in Africa, his thesis examined the political economy of urban water provision in Durban, South Africa.

Michael’s research interests focus on urban and environmental governance, comparative politics, and civil society organization. For the Ph.D. he is researching the issue of “scaling-up”, with a focus on the growth of local-level efforts to collectively provide public goods and resolve conflicts over resources in Africa.  Michael has published numerous academic articles and has contributed chapters to several recent books on environment and development policy.