Dr Gary Robinson

Gary Robinson is a Research Fellow at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER). He holds a PhD in Geography from Ghent University and from the University of Luxembourg. His doctoral thesis, entitled "Correspondent banking, SWIFT, and the geographies of financial infrastructure: Technological and organizational change in cross-border payments", was part of the FINWEBS project (INTER/FWO/16/11312037/FinWebs) which explored the role of agency in interconnecting international financial centres. Within this, Gary's thesis examined the correspondent banking system and the SWIFT financial messaging system as a combined sociotechnical infrastructure, historically contingent on the account money form. The research found that cooperation, enabled by trust embedded in SWIFT, is a key strategic agency in coordinating change towards new data-driven business models among banking competitors globally. The aim is to preserve the correspondent banking system and maintain banks' collective incumbency. Gary's work has been published in Global Networks, Area, and New Political Economy. His research interests include central banks, financial infrastructure, and money forms, including central bank digital currencies (CBDC), digital assets, and tokenization. Gary also holds a Master in Global Political Economy from the University of Sussex, and a Bachelor in International Business with German from the Technological University Dublin.