Edward T. Jackson
Adjunct Research Professor
Edward (Ted) Jackson is Adjunct Research Professor in the School of Public Policy and Administration at Carleton University. He also serves as Senior Research Fellow with the Carleton Centre for Community Innovation. In addition, Professor Jackson holds honorary appointments at the University of Ottawa and the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University and is the volunteer Chair of the Group of 78, a foreign-policy non-profit.
His current research interests focus on plurilateralism and emerging middle powers, jobs in the energy transition, gender incentives in climate finance, philanthropy in Asia and Africa, the role of the private sector in sustainable development, and community-university partnerships for affordable housing.
Professor Jackson’s research is widely cited in the fields of impact investing, blended finance, development evaluation, participatory research, and community-university partnerships. In 2022, he co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Sustainable Finance and Investment on growing gender lens investing in emerging markets. Over a productive, multidisciplinary academic career, his work has been cited in more than 200 peer-reviewed social-science journals across a dozen fields and disciplines.
Dr. Jackson’s longstanding relationship with Carleton is grounded in a distinguished 21-year career (1993–2014) as a faculty member and administrator. During that time, he served as a tenured Associate Professor at the School of Public Policy and Administration with cross-appointments in the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and Institute of African Studies; founding Director of the Carleton Centre for Community Innovation; and Associate Dean (Research, Graduate Affairs and Faculty Development) in the Faculty of Public Affairs.
He worked extensively with the late former Dean Katherine Graham to connect Carleton with community organizations, governments and businesses throughout Eastern Ontario and across Canada, supported by the McConnell Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Bell Canada and other corporates, foundations and government agencies. From 1997 to 2008, he directed the Community Economic Development Technical Assistance Program, a pan-Canadian grant-making initiative.
In 2001, he co-designed and piloted the Carleton University-World Bank International Program for Development Evaluation Training, which became the world’s premier executive development course in its field and is now based at the University of Bern.
In 2007-2010, as Associate Dean, Professor Jackson chaired university-wide committees on community engagement and partnerships, authoring the Oxygen of Community, an influential report that informed Carleton’s outreach strategy for many years.
In 2014, Professor Jackson taught the first online Master of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership course on program evaluation and remains engaged with the program’s faculty and students. In 2021, he co-founded the Jackson Family Scholarship in Community Engagement, which, by 2026, had supported five MPNL students.
Dr Jackson has also served as a consultant to bilateral and multilateral development agencies and banks, investment funds, foundations, non-profits, and universities in 60 countries, including Bangladesh, Belize, Ghana, Kenya, Singapore, South Africa, and Vietnam. He has advised the development cooperation programs of Australia, Canada, Denmark and Switzerland, the Mastercard and Rockefeller foundations, the Caribbean Development Bank, ILO, OECD, United Nations Environment Program, UN Women, the World Bank, and World University Service of Canada.
For fifty years, he has served in various roles—researcher, consultant, professor, trainer, evaluator—on a series of projects in Ghana on water, governance, gender equality, impact investing, gender lens investing, and graduate education. He worked closely with the late Dr. Sulley Gariba to establish the Institute for Policy Alternatives in northern Ghana.
An active volunteer, Ted Jackson co-founded the McLeod Group think tank and advised the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a farmworkers’ rights group, and the Sweef Capital impact fund in Singapore.
Professor Jackson’s work has been recognized with the Individual Leadership Award of the Responsible Investment Association of Canada; the Canadian Evaluation Society Award for Contribution to Evaluation in Canada; the Karl Boudreault Award for Leadership in Evaluation; Carleton University’s Faculty of Public Affairs Teaching Excellence Award; the Current Research Award of the Community Development Society; and the Ontario Medal for Good Citizenship.
He holds the designation of Certified Responsible Investment Professional from the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment and the Responsible Investment Association of Canada and is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts in the United Kingdom.
Ted Jackson was originally trained in adult education and community development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. As a graduate student in the 1970s, inspired by the Brazilian popular educator Paolo Freire, and working with Budd Hall, Rajesh Tandon and others, he helped to launch the first international participatory research network.
A Canadian national, he lives in Ottawa.