James S. Jackson

2017 Winner

President’s Award for National and State Leadership

LSA; School of Public Health Psychology; Health Behavior and Health Education


James S. Jackson is the Daniel Katz Distinguished University Professor of Psychology in the School of Literature, Science, and the Arts and a professor of health behavior and health education in the School of Public Health. His research focuses on issues of racial and ethnic influences on life course development, attitude change, reciprocity, social support and coping and health among blacks in the Diaspora. He is past director of the Institute for Social Research and the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, and past national president of the Black Students Psychological Association and Association of Black Psychologists. He was awarded the University of Michigan’s inaugural Distinguished Diversity Scholar Career Award in 2017, and was honored with the Distinguished Career Contributions to Research Award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues, American Psychological Association and the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for Distinguished Career Contributions in Applied Psychology from the Association for Psychological Sciences. He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences.

Jackson is currently directing the most extensive social, political behavior and mental and physical health surveys on African American and Black Caribbean populations ever conducted: “The National Survey of American Life” and “The Family Survey across Generations and Nations” as well as the National Science Foundation- and Carnegie Corporation-supported “National Study of Ethnic Pluralism and Politics.” Recent publications include “African Americans in a Diversifying Nation” and “Age Cohort, Ancestry and Immigration Status Influences on Family Relations and Psychological Well-being among Three-generation Caribbean Black Families.” He serves on several boards for the National Research Council and the National Academies of Science and is a founding member of the Aging Society Research Network of the MacArthur Foundation.