F.L. Jessica Ball, M.P.H., Ph.D.

Early Childhood Care and Development Consultant Profile

Jessica Ball is a professor in the School of Child and Youth Care at the University of Victoria, Canada and an independent consultant on a range of projects, mainly pertaining to Early Childhood Care and Development. Dr. Ball received her M.A. in developmental psychology, Ph.D. in clinical psychology, and M.P.H. in international health from the University of California, Berkeley. She has taught at universities in North America and Asia. She has done research, teaching, and program evaluation projects focused on early learning and language development for international organizations such as the Open Society Foundation, the Aga Khan Foundation Canada, and UNESCO. Dr. Ball spent 12 years, from 1984 to 1996, in Southeast Asia, working with community service agencies and government ministries on research and programs involving mental health, youth health behaviours, and all levels of education from post-graduate to preschool.

For 10 years Dr. Ball was the Co-Coordinator of an innovative, bicultural, post-secondary education program to strengthen Indigenous capacity to design and deliver culturally based early childhood care and development programs (www.fnpp.org). Dr. Ball was a founding faculty member in the Early Childhood Development Virtual University initiative, in which she created and taught graduate courses in ECCD in Africa and the Middle East. She is a core international faculty member in the BRAC University M.A. program in ECCD, in which she has created and taught graduate courses from 2008 to the present.

Dr. Ball is the principal investigator of an interdisciplinary, grant funded program of research on the cultural nature of child and family development (www.ecdip.org). Projects include father’s involvement, Indigenous children’s health, early language development, evaluation of quality child care and child development outcomes, early screening and intervention, and child care capacity building in rural and remote communities. Dr. Ball is a member of the Father Involvement Research Alliance and was a co-principal investigator in the first national study of fatherhood, leading the Indigenous fathers component of the study. Dr. Ball is the author or co-author of over 100 journal articles and book chapters and three books.