Nikolic’s academic work in the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management focuses on understanding system behaviour and shape the coevolution of socio-technical systems, mainly industry and infrastructuresystems. And it is this interest in industry that connects Nikolic to metal work, what he calls the ‘original industry’.
As a member of Revspace (a hacker space in The Hague), Nikolic said several years ago someone suggested they buy a welder. And now Nikolic practices the trade in a self-built work space appropriately named the “Spark Shack”.
But it is the process that inspires Nikolic. “People look at metal and think it’s a finite thing, that it doesn’t change,” he said. “But it’s one of the most basic physical processes when metal yields to your will.” He explained that there are long periods of boredom staring at the fire, waiting until it reaches the right temperature, followed by short bursts of activity shaping the metal. Nikolic also said learning this process has taught him about how to deal with failure and how to approach a problem in academia.
“As a scientist if you don’t like what you create you click Control+Z and it’s undone,” he said. “In metal work if you mess up it takes hours of hard physical labor to fix it.”
Nikolic thinks that every academic should try something like metal work. “Academics tend to look down on blue-collar trades until they realize the skill and training required,” he said. “Dealing with things that are this extreme, uncommonly violent and hot, focuses the mind.”
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