Joseph Wong

Joseph Wong is Vice-President, International, University of Toronto, where he is also a Professor of Political Science in the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Prof. Wong was the Director of the Asian Institute from 2005 to 2014 and the Roz and Ralph Halbert Professor of Innovation from 2013 to 2023 at the Munk School. He held the Canada Research Chair in Health, Democracy, and Development for two terms, from 2006 to 2016.

Prof. Wong is the author of many academic articles and several books, including Healthy Democracies: Welfare Politics in Taiwan and South Korea (2004) and Betting on Biotech: Innovation and the Limits of Asia’s Developmental State (2011), both published by Cornell University Press. In 2022, he and Dan Slater published From Development to Democracy: the Transformations of Modern Asia, with Princeton University Press. Most recently, Prof. Wong published The Welfare State in East Asia with Cambridge University Press (2025). His articles have appeared in journals such as the Lancet, the Annual Review of Political Science, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Politics and Society, and Governance, among many others.

Prof. Wong has worked with international organizations and governments in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe. He founded the Reach Alliance in 2015. Inspired by the UN Sustainable Development Goals and supported by the MasterCard Center for Inclusive Growth, Reach is a research-intensive initiative that examines how development interventions reach the “hardest to reach” communities around the world. The Reach Alliance has scaled globally, including partnerships with universities in South Africa, Ghana, the UK, Singapore, Australia and Mexico.

Prof. Wong is the Vice-Chair of the Upper Canada College Board of Governors. He also sits on boards of other organizations, including Nutrition International.