Professor Wong is available to meet with graduate students who would like to discuss their research with him. Please email crrs@utoronto.ca to book an appointment.
Thursday, March 26, 2026, 4:00 pm
Victoria College Chapel
91 Charles St W.
Most people alive in the Early Modern Era had no expectations that their descendants could continue to expand their material wealth because they recognized what Fernand Braudel has called the “Limits of the Possible.” Little did Braudel know that the generations that have followed him would increasingly become aware that they lived in societies embedded in natural environments that imposed “limits of the possible.” Learning multiple early modern approaches to “limits of the possible” can inform our efforts to achieve feasible and desirable futures for generations that follow us.
R. Bin Wong
Distinguished Research Professor of History, UCLA
Before moving to UCLA in 2004 to be the founding Director (2004-2016) of the UCLA Asia Institute, Bin Wong served as Director of the Center for Asian Studies at UC Irvine where he was Chancellor’s Professor of History and Economics. He has also been a visiting professor and researcher at institutions in mainland China, France, Japan, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. Wong’s own research has examined Chinese patterns of political, economic and social change, especially since eighteenth century, both within Asian regional contexts and compared with more familiar European patterns, as part of the larger scholarly efforts under way to make world history speak to contemporary conditions of globalization. Wong has written, co-written, co-edited, and translated ten books and also written or co-authored more than a hundred articles published in published in Chinese, English, French, German and Japanese journals that reach diverse audiences within and beyond academia. He sits on the Scientific Council of the Paris School of Economics and Political Science and previously served on the External Research Evaluation Committee of Japan’s Research Institute on Humanity and Nature as well as the International Advisory Board of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes. Since his retirement from UCLA in 2023 he has been teaching in a graduate program on political economy at the Taipei School of Economics and Political Science.
