Routes to Design History: Episode 12 - Wendy Wong

18 May, 2026

In the next episode of our new podcast series: Routes to Design History, we speak with Dr. Wendy S. Wong, Full Professor in the Department of Design at York University, Toronto, whose research focuses on Chinese comic art, graphic design history, transnational Asian visual cultures, and identity studies. An internationally recognized scholar in these fields, she is the author of Hong Kong Comics: A History of Manhua (2002, Princeton Architectural Press) and The Disappearance of Hong Kong in Comics, Advertising and Graphic Design (2018, Palgrave Macmillan). She also co-edited Transnationalism in East and Southeast Asian Comics Art (2022) with John A. Lent and Benjamin Wai-ming Ng, examining comics cultures across six East Asian and seven Southeast Asian countries.

Dr. Wong has contributed to major reference works including The Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design (2012) and The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design (2016). She has held several editorial roles, including serving as Regional Editor for Greater China for the Encyclopedia of East Asian Design (2020), a member of the Journal of Design History Editorial Board (2012–2017), and Associate Editor of Design and Culture: The Journal of the Design Studies Forum, a role she concluded in 2022. Her current research explores transnational Asian art, diasporic identities, and decolonization through storytelling, research-creation, digital technology, and generative AI.

Listen on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/

Developed by our Teaching and Learning Officer Deepika Srivastava, our Student Officer Alex Todd, and former Ambassadors Dan Mu and Pippy Stephenson, the Routes to Design History podcast series explores diverse ways of practising the field. Join us as we uncover the many routes to shaping a career in design history.