Dr Stefan Bauer - Lecturer in Early Modern History

Stefan Bauer is an intellectual and cultural historian of late medieval and early modern Europe; his research interests cover humanism, religious polemic, church history, and censorship. Bauer is also a Research Associate at the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, University of York, a Privatdozent at the University of Fribourg, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He previously held positions as a Lecturer in Early Modern History and Marie Curie Fellow in York, and as a Research Fellow both at the German Historical Institute in Rome and the Italian-German Historical Institute in Trent.

Building on my earlier work on Bartolomeo Platina’s History of the Popes, its afterlife and papal censorship, my third monograph, The Invention of Papal History: Onofrio Panvinio between Renaissance and Catholic Reform, came out with Oxford University Press in December 2019. History-writing in early modern Rome is a surprisingly underexplored subject, with major open questions. Most importantly, how was the history of post-classical Rome and of the Church written in the Counter Reformation? Historical texts composed in Rome at this time have been considered secondary to the city’s significance for the history of art. My new book corrects this distorting emphasis and shows how history-writing became part of a comprehensive formation of the image and self-perception of the papacy. These new findings are situated in the context of the uneasy relationship between history and theology during the turmoil of politics and religion in the sixteenth century. The book has just been longlisted for the RefoRC book award.

I am a member of the expert panel of the European Commission which evaluates Marie Curie fellowship applications, and I have acted as a peer reviewer of unpublished manuscripts for (Oxford University Press) Renaissance Quarterly, Sixteenth Century Journal, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, International Journal of the Classical Tradition and Krypton.

Moreover, I am a managing editor of Lias: Journal of Early Modern Intellectual Culture and its Sources.

Since 2016, I have acted as the UK Chair of the Marie Curie Alumni Association, which entails organizing fellows' events across universities. During my tenure, UK membership has increased from 30 to nearly 600. The Association has recently organised events on Equality and Diversity, Mental Health in Academia and Storytelling. Previously, we invited speakers such as the Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society.

I have achieved further impact through several activities, including exhibitions at the York Minster and the Middle Temple Library, public lectures and an extensive internet presence with two interactive digital exhibitions, a WordPress blog and Twitter feeds. I would enjoy engaging in other outreach activities, organizing, for example, events on the history of the freedom of speech or on forgeries and fakes, drawing connections to debates on post-truth. If you are interested in collaborating on any of my research themes (for which see my PURE page), please do get in touch.

Affiliations

• Fellow, Higher Education Academy
• Fellow, Royal Historical Society
• Corresponding Fellow, Roma nel Rinascimento
• Member, Renaissance Society of America
• Society for Renaissance Studies
• Member, Research Network 'Early Modern Religious Dissent and Radicalism'

More information about my research is available via PURE

Email - stefan.bauer@rhul.ac.uk

Twitter - @BauerStefan @histheol

Website - historytheology.wordpress.com/

Digital exhibitions: social.shorthand.com/DisagreeBadly