A lifelong Michigander, Shawn Phillip Cooper joined the Mackinac Center in 2026 as the director of education policy. He brings more than a decade of university teaching experience to the Center, having served as Assistant Professor of English at Rochester Christian University, full-time faculty at Oakland Community College, and part-time faculty at Wayne State University. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and the host of the Critical Readings podcast, and he is on the advisory board of the journal Encomia.

Most recently, he was President of the International Courtly Literature Society’s North American Branch and Senior Editor at The European Conservative Magazine. Before that, he was a John and Daria Berry Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He did a B.A. in History and English at Oakland University before going on to complete an M.A. in English in the same institution. He was then awarded a Thomas C. Rumble doctoral fellowship to study mediæval English literature and culture at Wayne State University.

Dr. Cooper's scholarship is focused on the complex relationship of culture and governance. He has presented and organized many panels at the International Congress on Mediæval Studies, and much of his published scholarship concerns Arthurian literature of the mediæval era and the nineteenth century. Beyond his research interests, he is an accomplished pianist and organist; a church music director in the Archdiocese of Detroit during the early 2000s, he also taught piano and music theory at regional music academies. He enjoys attending symphony, opera, and theater performances, and watching that greatest of all sports: Test Cricket.