Nishanth Kumar

Dr Nishanth Kumar is a quantitative researcher specialising in network science and computational approaches to social and economic systems.

He holds a PhD in Mathematics from Imperial College London, where his research focused on processes on production networks and emergent inequality. He uses computational models to study how local interactions and network structure give rise to system-level patterns in economic and social systems.

Before his PhD, he spent eight years in applied policy research in India, working on household finance, social protection and the economic vulnerability of low-income and informal-sector households. His current research interests centre on how social network structure shapes behaviour, reputation and access to resources, and how these processes can contribute to the persistence of social and economic inequality.

Research interests:

Network Science; Computational Social Science; Agent-Based Modelling; Social and Economic Inequality; Social Protection; Public Policy

Publications:

Kumar, N., Jensen, H. J., & Viegas, E. (2026). Tracing inequitable emissions in global trade using a networks approach. Royal Society Open Science, 13, 251246.

Sahasranaman, A., Kumar, N., Erbertseder, T., Wurm, M., Taubenböck, H., & Bettencourt, L. M. A. (2026). Effects of urbanization, scale, and geography on air pollution in India. npj Clean Air, 2, 20.

Sahasranaman, A., & Kumar, N. (2023). Distributional Dynamics of Income in Indian States: Inequality, Redistribution, and Poverty Transitions. Economic and Political Weekly, 58(25–26), 37–46.

Kumar, N., Jensen, H. J., & Viegas, E. (2023). Economic Trading Susceptibility: Constructing Networks of Mutual Influence through the Fitness of Countries. Entropy, 25, 141.

Sahasranaman, A., & Kumar, N. (2022). Income and Inequality across Rural–Urban, Occupational, and Caste Divides. Economic and Political Weekly, 57(26–27), 23–30.

Sudarsanam, N., Kumar, N., Sharma, A., & Ravindran, B. (2020). Rate of change analysis for interestingness measures. Knowledge and Information Systems, 62(1), 239–258.