From 1980 to 1981, Jackson was employed as a graduate assistant with the
Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University in Bloomington, where she evaluated and accessioned music submitted to the department's recording studio. She was also an associate instructor with the university's ethnomusicology department, and taught "World Folk Music Traditions" during this time. From 1982 to 1983, she provided consulting services to the William Ransom Hogan Jazz Archives at
Tulane University in
New Orleans, Louisiana, where she catalogued the archives' gospel collection and organized a gospel music conference. Subsequently hired by Louisiana State University, she rose through the academic ranks from assistant to associate to full professor, beginning in 1987. An educator who has taught courses in cultural anthropology, ethnomusicology and folklore, she was appointed as an affiliate professor of African & African American Studies in 1994, as an affiliate professor of Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies in 1996, and as director of LSU's African & African American Studies program from 2010 to 2016. Her research has included investigations of African American religious music, the ways in which the Afro-French diaspora influenced the culture and history of Louisiana, Bahamian sacred rituals, the cultural traditions and legacy of Haitian immigrants in Louisiana, the healing rituals of Senegalese women, the Mardi Gras Indian traditions of masquerade and music in New Orleans, the Mississippi Delta's influence on the community of
Winnsboro, Louisiana, including that community's Easter Rock folklife, southern Louisiana's coastal jazz history, and Trinidad's Carnival. During the early years of the twenty-first century, Jackson was hired by the United States
National Park Service to research, document and write a cultural and historical study of the village of the historic African American village of
Fazendeville, Louisiana, which was razed during the 1960s to facilitate expansion of the Chalmette National Battlefield in the
Jean Lafitte National Historic Park and Preserve. Completed in 2003, the study included multiple oral histories recorded by Jackson with former residents and descendants of former residents of the village and resulted in the
United States Department of the Interior's publication of Jackson's
Life in the Village: A Cultural Memory of the Fazendeville Community. Jackson then published "Declaration of Taking Twice: The Fazendeville Community of the
Lower Ninth Ward," in
American Anthropologist in 2006. Named as the Brij Mohan Distinguished Professor of Social Justice in 2015, she was then appointed as an affiliate professor of International Studies in 2016 and was named the James J. Parsons Endowed Professor and chair of the department of geography and anthropology at Louisiana State University in 2021. That same year, Jackson was also awarded the LSU Faculty Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Mentoring Award by the university, and was recognized by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities for her enhancement of the understanding of African American culture and music, sacred and secular rituals in Africa and the diaspora with the endowment's Lifetime Contributions to the Humanities award. ==Charitable giving and public service activities==