In 2006, Hicks was appointed an honorary fellow at Florida State University's Institute on Napoleon and the French Revolution.

He was appointed to the editorial board of St Andrews Studies in French History and Culture in 2011, and was invited to become director of the Massena Society in 2013.

Hicks received a doctoral degree, on the manuscript tradition of Greek bucolic poems during the Renaissance, at Cambridge University's St. John's College in 1993.

Hicks has been the music director at St George’s Anglican Church in Paris and of the Musicanti choir, and he has also been an orchestral conductor.

He has conducted Hector Berlioz' arrangement of "La Marseillaise", Brahms' Requiem, Britten's Cantata St Nicholas, Charpentier's Te Deum, Nisi Dominus, Cherubini, Coronation Mass for Louis XVIII, Handel's Messiah, Israel in Egypt, The Ways of Zion do Mourn, Utrecht Te Deum, Utrecht Jubilate, Lesueur's Cantata for the Marriage of Napoleon I and Marie-Louise, Marche du Sacre de Napolon I, Méhul's "Le Chant du depart", "O doux printemps" and "Comblé de bonheur" (cantatas for the marriage of Napoleon I and Marie Louise), Mozart's Credo Mass and Solemn Vespers of a Confessor, Paisiello's Coronation Mass for Napoleon I, Purcell's King Arthur and Rossini's Petite messe solennelle.