SPSSI President 2010-11

  James S. Jackson is the Daniel Katz Distinguished University Professor of Psychology, Professor of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, and Director and Research Professor of the Institute for Social Research. He is the past Chair, Social Psychology Training Program and Director of the Research Center for Group Dynamics, the Program for Research on Black Americans, and Center for Afroamerican and African Studies, all at the University of Michigan. He is past-Chair of the Section on Social, Economic, and Political Sciences (K) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is a former Chair of the Section on Social and Behavioral Sciences, and the Task Force on Minority Issues of the Geronontological Society of America, and the Committee on International Relations and the Association for the Advancement of Psychology of the American Psychological Association.

He served on the National Advisory Mental Health Council of the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute on Aging Advisory Council and the Board of Scientific Counselors that oversees the NIA Intramural research programs.  He is former National President of the Black Students Psychological Association and the Association of Black Psychologists.  He is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, American Psychological Association, Association of Psychological Sciences, and recently named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Career Contributions to Research Award, Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues, American Psychological Association, and recently the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award for Distinguished Career Contributions in Applied Psychology from the Association for Psychological Sciences. He is an elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences.

He has conducted research and published numerous books, scientific articles, and chapters on international, comparative studies on immigration, race and ethnic relations, physical and mental health, adult development and aging, attitudes and attitude change, and Black American politics. Over the last 30 years he has been the principal investigator of over two dozen funded NIH and NSF grants, and is currently directing the most extensive social, political behavior, and mental and physical health surveys on the African American and Caribbean populations ever conducted, “The National Survey of American Life” and the “The Family Connection Survey across Generations and Nations”, and the National Science Foundation and Carnegie Corporation supported “National Study of Ethnic Pluralism and Politics”.