Victoria Jackson

Victoria Jackson is a sports historian and clinical associate professor of history in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. Jackson is a public scholar whose work focuses on the intersection of sport and society and explores how the games we play (and watch) tell us much about the communities – local, national, and global – in which we live. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate, Letras Libres (Mexico), El Universal (Mexico), Epoca (Brazil), The Independent (UK),The Athletic, and Sportico. She has appeared on 60 Minutes to discuss American college sports issues and is a frequent podcast, radio, TV, and documentary film commentator. 

Jackson brings a historian's eye to projects of designing optimized, healthy sports systems and is deeply engaged in sports policy work. Outside the U.S. she has advised sports clubs, universities, and nonprofits on building cultures and creating mechanisms of inclusion and gender equity. Inside the U.S. she has worked to bridge the gap between two major sports policy projects: the redesign of American college sports and the overhaul of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Movement. She has testified on Capitol Hill twice, at the top of the 2023 public hearing of the Commission on the State of the U.S. Olympics and Paralympics to set the historical stage and the current stakes, and in a 2024 hearing before a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee.

Jackson is co-director of a new initiative at ASU called the Great Game Lab. The GGL’s mission is to explore the convergence of global sport, media, and geopolitics, as well as America’s ever closer sporting relationship with the rest of the world as the U.S. prepares to host the shared North American 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup during the nation’s 250th birthday celebration, and Olympic & Paralympic Games in Los Angeles two years later. The Great Game Lab commissions research and commentary, creates courses, and convene forums and other programming on ASU’s campuses in metro Phoenix, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, and Mexico City. 

Jackson leads the sport humanities at ASU, directs Sports @ Humanities Institute, and teaches a package of sports history courses, which forms part of an interdisciplinary, liberal arts undergraduate certificate in “sports, cultures, and ethics." She also has served on advisory boards of nonprofits with missions focused on sport and social change, and is a director of the Phoenix Women’s Sports Association, a local nonprofit organization with the mission of helping underserved girls find their power through sport.  

Jackson is also co-editor of Power Plays: The New Sports Studies, a new book series at the University of Oklahoma Press.

She holds MA and PhD degrees from Arizona State University, and a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she graduated summa cum laude and joined Phi Beta Kappa. Jackson was also a cross country and track and field athlete for UNC and ASU, Pac-10 conference champion at 5,000 meters, NCAA national champion for the Sun Devils at 10,000 meters, and a professional runner endorsed by Nike. Jackson collaborates with Sun Devil Athletics on a variety of history, education, and leadership initiatives with athletes, coaches, administrators, and the greater Sun Devil community. She would like for her ASU school record in the 5,000 meters to be broken as soon as possible.