Nickolas received his B.A. in Classics with a Minor in History from the University of Massachusetts in 2015. As an undergraduate, he worked on the Pompeii Quadriporticus Project (2013), began to excavate at Poggio Civitate (2014-2016), and was actively involved in digital archaeological projects. He presented his findings from Pompeii in a Digital Archaeological Practice Workshop (2014) and additionally worked in the UMass Image Collection Library (2015). Afterwards, he studied at Columbia University in the Classics post-baccalaureate program, where he focused on refining his Latin and Greek.
Nickolas’s main research interests include Roman, Etruscan, and Greek art and archaeology, with a concentration on late Republican and early Imperial Southern Italian domestic architecture. His thesis, “Colonnades in the Domestic Spaces of Pompeii,” stems from his onsite work in 2013. This thesis analyzes the relationship between columns and other architectural elements within domestic space. This approach has allowed Nickolas to discern different types of colonnades and measure their impact upon the spaces they occupied. More generally, Nickolas is interested in the architecture of domestic space, and how factors such as alignment respond to the local environment. At Columbia, he intends to expand his area of research into Greece, Egypt, and the Near East.