Kenneth Pomeranz

Associate Professor of History, University of California (Irvine)

Kenneth Pomeranz is the Chairperson of the Department of History at the University of California-Irvine. Mr. Pomeranz received his Ph.D from Yale in 1988.

His research has focused on the three primary areas: reciprocal influences of state, society and economy in late Imperial and twentieth-century China; the origins of a world economy as the outcome of mutual influences among various regions; and comparative studies on gendered labor and economic change in Europe and East Asia, the long-term significance and global context of environmental change in Qing and 20th century China. He has also published the book, “From Core to Hinterland.”

Steven Topik is a Professor of History at the University of California-Irvine. He received his Ph.D from the University of Texas in 1978.

Mr. Topik’s areas of specialty include the history of Brazil and Mexico, as well as the political economy and world economy, as seen through the history of coffee.

Other areas of interest have included the effects of foreign trade and investment; the participation of domestic elites in the international and internal economies; the state’s role in export economies; local resistance to outside forces; and the ideological and cultural consequences of closer integration into the world economy. He writes a bi-monthly column in the business magazine World Trade.

His first book was “The Political Economy of the Brazilian State,” which was later followed by “Trade and Gunboats” and “The Second Conquest of Latin America,” with Allen Wells and Jonathan Brown.