is a political scientist and senior researcher at the Austrian Academy of Science, Institute for European Integration Research, and, as of January 2007, professor in political and social theory at the European University Institute in Florence. His research interests are in normative political theory and comparative research on democratic citizenship, European integration, migration, nationalism, and minority rights. He has taught at the Universities of Innsbruck and Vienna and the Central European University, Budapest. He has also been a visiting academic at the Bellagio Rockefeller Foundation, Yale University, the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, the University of Bristol, the University of Malmö, the Institute for Advanced Study, and the University of Warwick. In 2003-2005, Bauböck was president of the Austrian Association of Political Science. For his work on immigration and social cohesion, he was awarded the 2006 Latsis Prize of the European Science Foundation.

Bauböck is the author of Transnational Citizenship. Membership and Rights in International Migration (1994) and editor of a series of books on migration, citizenship, and diversity. Most recently, he coordinated a comparative research project on citizenship laws and policies in the European Union. Results were published in September 2006 by Amsterdam University Press: Rainer Bauböck, Eva Ersboll, Kees Groenendijk and Harald Waldrauch (eds.), Acquisition and Loss of Nationality. Policies and Trends in 15 European States. vol. 1: comparative analyses, vol. 2: country analyses.