About
Hello. I'm a research fellow at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER). I hold a PhD in Geography from Ghent University, Belgium, and the University of Luxembourg, and an MA in global political economy from the University of Sussex, UK.
I'm broadly interested in these things, among others: economic and financial geography; political economy; power; global finance; financial infrastructure; payments; correspondent banking; SWIFT; money; central bank digital currencies (CBDC); digital money/assets and tokenization.
My life is mostly on hold and severely limited since March 2021 due to Long COVID. Because of this, I am also interested in research on causes and treatment of long COVID, ME/CFS, and other post-acute infection syndromes (PAIS)/infection associated chronic conditions (IACC), as well as on the history, psychologization, and stigmatization of these conditions.
My doctoral thesis, entitled "Correspondent banking, SWIFT, and the geographies of financial infrastructure: Technological and organizational change in cross-border payments", 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 in SWIFT, is a key strategic agency in coordinating change towards new data-driven business models among banking competitors globally, with the aim of preserving the correspondent banking system and maintaining banks' collective incumbency.
The thesis was part of the FINWEBS project (INTER/FWO/16/11312037/FinWebs), led by my thesis supervisors Prof Dr Ben Derudder and Dr Sabine Dörry, which explored the role of agency in interconnecting international financial centres.
Publications
Peer-reviewed journal articles
Robinson, G., Dörry, S., & Derudder, B. (2024). Preserving the obligatory passage point: SWIFT and the partial platformisation of global payments. Geoforum, 151, 104007. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2024.104007
Robinson, G., Dörry, S., & Derudder, B. (2023). Global networks of finance and information at the crossroads: Correspondent banking and SWIFT. Global Networks, 23(2), 478–493. https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12408 
Robinson, G. (2021). Capturing a moving target: Interviewing fintech experts via LinkedIn. Area, 53(4), 671–678. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12726 | Download accepted version 
Robinson, G. (2017). Pragmatic financialisation: The role of the Japanese Post Office. New Political Economy, 22(1), 61–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2016.1195347 | Download accepted version
Book chapters
Robinson, G., Dörry, S. and Derudder, B. (2025) 'SWIFT: Trusted infrastructure for infrastructures', in C. Westermeier, M. Campbell-Verduyn, and B. Brandl (eds) The Cambridge Global Handbook of Financial Infrastructure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009428118.022
Working papers
Dörry, S., Robinson, G., & Derudder, B. (2018). There Is No Alternative: SWIFT as Infrastructure Intermediary in Global Financial Markets. Financial Geography Working Paper #22. FinGeo. http://www.fingeo.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/FinGeoWP22_Doerry_Robinson_Derudder_SwiftGPN.pdf
Book reviews
Robinson, G. (2018). Beyond the usual suspects: A global analysis of global finance. Book review of: Hall S. 2017. Global Finance: Places, Spaces and People. London, Sage. Articulo - Journal of Urban Research. https://doi.org/10.4000/articulo.3545
Long COVID
I've had long COVID since March 2021 following initial infection in December 2020. Acute infection was fairly mild but lasted for 5 weeks. It then cleared up for 7 weeks before long COVID began. It has barely changed since around 6 months after long COVID-onset and is mostly mild-moderate (which is still disabling) but sometimes severe, after crashes following "overexertion" (actually very minor exertion by normal standards). My symptoms are mainly: neurocognitive (including tinnitus, varieties of headaches and strange/unpleasant brain sensations, cognitive dysfunction, sound sensitivity, vision problems, phantosmia); cardiac/autonomic (palpitations); and "fatigue" (a grossly inadequate term to describe absence of energy) and post-exertional symptom exacerbation (PESE) due to the body's inability to generate enough energy. As one sufferer put it, long COVID feels 'like waking up in a suit of medieval armour after a night on the mead'.
I'll occasionally put some info on dealing with Long COVID on this page on Notion.
