Dr Adam Leon Cooper
Dr Adam Cooper is a senior research specialist in the HSRC's Inclusive Economic Development research division. He holds a PhD degree in education policy studies from Stellenbosch University. Cooper specialises in the sociologies of education and youth, looking at how young people navigate various social challenges shaped by race, class, gender, age, language and spatial relations, amongst others, to create opportunities for themselves and others.
Cooper was formerly a post-doctoral scholar at the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York (2014-2016) and a Commonwealth Scholar at Cambridge University (2012-2013). He leads a mixed-methods national project on parents' perceptions of quality education, evaluated the Public Schools Partnership - a pilot public-private educational project and an evaluation of an independent school, Christel House South Africa. He works on the Imprint of Education study, leading the component that explores structural barriers to young people finding fulfilling livelihoods and giving back to their societies. Before joining the HSRC, Cooper worked at the Extra-Mural Education Project, a non-profit organisation that worked with schools in low-income communities to develop these schools as hubs of their communities through extra-murals.
Cooper is on the editorial committee of the Journal of Education (UKZN) and the editorial board of the Journal of Youth Studies. He has published 12 scientific articles in local and international peer-reviewed academic journals, 8 research reports, and 8 book chapters. He wrote a sole-authored book, Dialogue in Places of Learning: Youth Amplified from South Africa, which was published by Routledge, London in 2017, co-authored Studying While Black: Race, education and emancipation in South African universities (Cape Town: HSRC Press, 2018) and is a co-editor of the Oxford University Press Handbook of Global South Youth Studies (2021). He has also presented more than 30 papers at local and international conferences.
Life Stories Podcast
To produce a second series of podcast on barriers to youth livelihoods based on stories from the Presidential Youth Employment Stimulus (PYES) in Sout....
Open Access- : Morphing across the margins: how young people make a living in South Africa and beyond
I have just published a journal article with the Journal of Youth Studies, title: Morphing across the margins: how young people make a living in South....
Skills and Edu for youth in the informal economy -The Kaleidoscope Series
Evidence, Engagement and Innovation on Critical Economic Questions to Reduce Poverty and Inequality in South Africa....
The 2021 Social unrest in South Africa: Future scenarios
In response to the social unrest and following a presentation by the HSRC to the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee (NICOC) the Department ....
Parent Power National Survey
The purpose of this consultancy is the redesign, pilot, implementation, analysis and reporting of a National Survey to gauge parents perceptions and e....
DGMT PSP Independent Monitoring and Evaluation
To independently review and evaluate the PSP Programme from 2016 - 2020, as per the agreement.....
Support for monitoring and evaluating youth Capital (DG Murray Trust)
Support the Youth Capital team to design and implement a monitoring and evaluation framework....
The Imprint of Education (TIE): A Longitudinal Cohort Study of African Alumni of the MasterCard Foundation Scholars' Programme - Ghana
The proposed research design is a longitudinal cohort study which aims to survey Scholars??? Program Alumni from six African countries (Ethiopia, Ghan....
Christel House SA: assessing education quality and social mobility outcomes
The aim of this project is to study and evaluate the quality and performance of Christel Houses' academic and non-academic programs compared to other....
Adam Cooper - WITS
A project consuling on the project "Reconceptualising poetry education in South African Classrooms through infusing indigenous poetry texts and practi....
Adam Cooper - REAL: WITS
Provide technical support to the Centre for Reseaching Education and Labour for its project on inequality in education.....
A study of key skills issues and change drivers for the PSETA
This proposal has been prepared in response to a call by the Public Service Sector Education and Training Authority (PSETA) to analyse key skills issu....
Review of National Youth Policy in 5 African Regions
To address the gap in critical analysis of Africa youth development by focusing on the relevance of the national youth policies content; implementatio....
A multidimensional understanding of wellbeing to address poverty and inequality in South Africa: A historical, methodological and practical approach
We propose a medium to long term programme of research that develops a critical and multidimensional understanding of wellbeing to address poverty and....
Evaluation of the Skillz Street Plus project
The main aim of the evaluation is therefore to use qualitative research to assess the relative success of the project, which aimed to: Improve the a....
COE grant or fellowship for Adam Cooper
My doctoral work, which I am currently attempting to publish during an NRF funded one year post-doc abroad in New York (that ends in July 2015), as we....