The first volume of his two-volume anthology Movies and Methods (1976, 1985) helped to establish film studies as an academic discipline.

Nichols is Professor Emeritus in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University and Chair of the Documentary Film Institute advisory board.

Nichols has lectured in numerous countries,[2] served on film festival juries[3] on different continents, consults regularly on a variety of filmmaking projects, and has published over 100 articles.

[4] He is former president of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, a former advisor to the American Film Institute and has served as Department Chair in Canada and the United States.

Not a film historian in the traditional sense, Nichols has offered fresh views of historical assumptions but his main contribution has been to offer a conceptual framework for the study and production of documentary film.