About Nikolas Oktaba

Nikolas Oktaba was born in New York City to a single mother who came to the United States from Poland. Raised in post-industrial Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Nikolas’ greatest solace was its small public library. Though he often had to miss school to help his mother in her job as a cleaning lady, he always carried a stack of books to be read in rare moments of respite.

Self-directed study empowered Nikolas to leave Brooklyn, attending Fordham University in Manhattan and then the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, where he studied Classics and wrote his thesis about Nonnos’ epic poem Dionysiaca. Afterwards, Nikolas continued his interest in narrative and the ways in which it shapes our social worlds with a particular focus on trauma, exploring the subject through literature, the humanities, and learning directly from those impacted by various forms of trauma. He received the generous support of the Beinecke Scholarship and the Gates Cambridge Scholarship to pursue this work.

Believing that while trauma is universal its experiences are not, Nikolas continued to investigate it from different perspectives. Traveling to Asia with the Henry Luce Scholars Program, he deepened his understanding of trauma within Himalayan Buddhism. He explored storytelling and other forms of witnessing in post-traumatic survival as well as historical medical approaches towards trauma treatment.

Nikolas then went on to obtain his PhD in Comparative Literature at Yale University, specializing in narratives of trauma, paranoia, and mass violence. He graduated in 2026 with his dissertation about Polish-Ukrainian relations. Nikolas analyzes and addresses trauma in holistic ways that are not restricted to the academy.