He joined Harvard after working for several years with the United Nations Development Programme, including a year posted to the Kenya Ministry of Planning in Nairobi. Hooper’s research focuses on the politics of land use, housing and urbanization, with particular interest in issues of forced displacement, disasters and participatory governance. He currently works on projects related to forced evictions and involuntary resettlement in East Africa, the politics of post-disaster reconstruction in Haiti, the dynamics of rapid urbanization in Mongolia, and aboriginal housing policy in Canada. At the GSD, Hooper leads the Urban Planning and Design thesis program and serves as Director of the Social Agency Lab, an interdisciplinary research center that studies the ways in which individuals, institutions and organizations shape social outcomes in cities.