Cynthia Hooper's primary research interests are Russian and Soviet history, comparative dictatorship, and culture and politics in 20th century Europe.

She has published "A Darker 'Big Deal': Concealing Party Corruption, 1945-1953" in Living in Late Stalinism (Routledge, 2006); "Terror of Intimacy: Family Politics in the 1930s Soviet Union" in Everyday Life in Early Soviet Russia (University of Indiana Press, 2005); "Terror From Within: Participation and Coercion in Soviet Power, 1924-1964" (dissertation, awarded international Fraenkel Prize).

She has served as a Fellow at the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson Center and as a Fellow of the Davis Center at Harvard. She serves as a Center Associate at Harvard's Davis Center for Russian Studies.