Nikola Petković was born in Rijeka on 20 May 1962. He started his elementary education in a small coastal town of Bakar and continued in Rijeka. In 1987 he graduated with a degree in philosophy and comparative literature at the University of Zagreb. In 1996 he gained his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin with his thesis The Post in Postmodern and Postcolonial: The Case of Central Europe.