In spring 2018, he is a visiting research fellow at the University of Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture.

[2] In 2012 he was honored with the Paul Oskar Kristeller Lifetime Achievement Award of the Renaissance Society of America.

At Columbia, he worked with Eugene F. Rice and the historian of philosophy Paul Oskar Kristeller, serving as the latter's research assistant for six years.

Hankins' monographic work centers on the history of philosophy, theology, literature and political thought.

Since 2003 he has also been associate editor of the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum: Medieval and Renaissance Translations and Commentaries, Annotated Lists and Guides, a publication founded by his mentor Paul Oskar Kristeller in 1945.