[5] In 2018, he completed his Habilitation at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, obtaining the venia legendi in Early Modern History.
[8] The political scientist Wilhelm Hennis referred to it as "phenomenally learned"[9] and the historian Peter Funke as "an outstanding achievement in the history of science".
[11] The Sixteenth Century Journal noted that "Stefan Bauer has produced a scholarly tool essential for investigating the intersection of late-Renaissance ideas and practices with those of the Catholic Reformation".
… The Invention of Papal History is an admirably readable and fascinating portrait, not only of its principal subject, Panvinio, but also of the culture of late Renaissance humanism at a time of profound instability in Europe".
[15] His most recent research project, for which Bauer received funding from the European Commission, is entitled "History and Theology: the Creation of Disinterested Scholarship from Dogmatic Stalemate".