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Cooney is a professor of Egyptology at UCLA. Her academic work focuses on death preparations, afterlife beliefs, and gender studies. She has participated in digs with the Metropolitan Museum of New York at the Royal Pyramid complex of Senwosret III and the Theban Necropolis with Johns Hopkins University. She appeared as a lead expert in the popular Discovery Channel special The Secrets of Egypt's Lost Queen, and is a recurring team member of the History Channel's Digging for the Truth. Her book The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut’s Ride to Power in Ancient Egypt was published in 2014, and she also wrote When Women Ruled the World: Six Queens of Egypt, which was published by National Geographic in 2018.