Politics of Payments: Theorizing the Transformation of Monetary Orders

DAY 1 | MONDAY, SEP. 7, 2026

15:00
Welcome
Carolin Müller (Hamburg) & Aaron Sahr (Hamburg)

KEYNOTE
Approaching Colonial Durabilities in Modern Financial Infrastructures
Marieke de Goede (Amsterdam)

16:30
Payments as Affective Infrastructures: Vigilance and Monetary Hierarchies in Jamaica
Camilla Carabini (Milan)

17:15
Money, Colonial Power and Violence in Palestine
Christopher Harker (London)

Chair: Carolin Müller (Hamburg)

18:15
Crisis of the Liberal Monetary Order and the Rise of Digital Finance: Geopolitics of Payments in the Periphery
Ia Eradze (Tbilisi)

Chair: Aaron Sahr (Hamburg)

DAY 2 | TUESDAY, SEP. 8, 2026

09:00
Mines, Mints, and Coins: A Materialist Analysis of Metallic Monetary Systems
Nicolás Aguila (Witten/Herdecke)

09:45
The Development of Bank Deposits in Mid-Nineteenth Century England
Iain Frame (Dundee)

Chair: Aaron Sahr (Hamburg)

10:45
Making Money Resonate: Imagination and the Governance of Commercial Banking in 19th-century England and Sweden
Erik Olsson (Paris)

11:30
Public or Private? War Finance and Merchant-Bank Speculation in Colombia (1899-1904)
Ben Gilvar-Parke (London)

Chair: Florian Schmidt (Hamburg)

13:15
Internationalising the French Franc: Trade Finance, Banking Institutions, and the Paris Acceptance Market, 1928-1931
Jamieson G. Myles (Geneva/Oxford)

14:00
A Currency That Never Was: Economic Knowledge and Institutional Power in West Germany’s Parallel Currency Debate, 1977–1983
Johannes Frey (Potsdam)

Chair: Alexander Hobe (Hamburg)

15:00
When Money Left Democracy: The Evolution of Central Bank Independence
Lara Unland (Darmstadt)

15:45
The Changing Landscape of Outlawed Payments: How Emerging Regulatory Intermediaries are Transforming Economies Beyond State Law
Guadalupe Moreno (Frankfurt am Main) & Matías Dewey (St. Gallen)

Chair: Daphnae Picoli (Campinas)

16:45
The Faustian Bargain of Convenience: Payment Infrastructure and the Democratic Co-Production of Monetary Orders
Jeremy McKey (Princeton)

17:30
120 Years of Platformization of Payment: How Payment Devices Reshape Socio Economic Relations
Markus Unternährer (Lucerne)

Chair: Aaron Sahr (Hamburg)

DAY 3 | WEDNESDAY, SEP. 9, 2026

09:00
Crypto: From the Fringes to the Centre (of Government)?
Lina Schmid (Vienna)

09:45
The Everyday Drivers of Global Liquidity: Dollar Dominance, New Payment Technologies, and the Role of the State
Tobias Pforr (Copenhagen)

Chair: Aaron Sahr (Hamburg)

10:45
Payments as Performances: The Affective Turn in the Commodification of Value Transfer
Joy Malala (Warwick)

11:30
The Cash of Civilizations: Digital Payments in the EU, India, and Singapore
James Rosenberg (Madison/Berlin)

Chair: Carolin Müller (Hamburg)

13:15

Farewell & End of Workshop
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Contact: bruchlinien(at)his-online.de

More information: Historical-sociological Research Hub at Hamburg Institute for Social Research (HIS) 2026-2027