Network Inequality and Fairness Group

We’re excited to share a new paper from Nicola Cinardi and Fariba Karimi, published in npj Complexity!

The team built a network model where a group’s access to opportunities acts as a “fitness” factor shaping how the network grows. They find that structural marginalization — where disadvantaged groups get pushed to the periphery of social networks — emerges from the interplay between group preferences and unequal fitness, alongside the formation of advantaged “rich clubs.” Crucially, the model shows that simply growing a minority group’s size or connectivity isn’t enough to fix this: real fixes require directly addressing unequal starting points, through targeted funding and sponsorship that raise the resource base of disadvantaged groups.

📖 Read the paper — npj Complexity, 3, 16 (2026)