He combines fieldwork, typology, and evolutionary modelling and uses both experimental and observational methods.
He received his graduate training at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen and earned his doctoral degree from the University of Zurich.
As a postdoctoral researcher, he spent several years at the University of California, Berkeley, where he became a close collaborator of Johanna Nichols.
He has done extensive fieldwork on a number of Kiranti languages of Nepal, especially Belhare, Chintang and Puma.
Research out of Bickel's lab suggests that with the spread of agriculture and a switch to softer foods the overbite common among children became more prevalent in adults resulting in an increase in labiodentals such as "f" and "v" in human language.