Franz Bauman is a German Former United Nations official who served as Assistant Secretary-General and United Nations Special Adviser on Environment and Peace Operations at the United Nations Headquarters in New York until 2015. He previously served as Assistant Secretary-General for General Assembly Affairs. Since 2017 he has been Visiting Research Professor of International Relations at New York University.

Baumann began his professional career at the European Parliament in Luxembourg in 1976, later working at the European Commission in Brussels and at Siemens in Munich. He began his career with the United Nations in Nigeria, as Associate Expert for the United Nations Development Program.He subsequently worked in various departments in the United Nations, and in 2002 was appointed Director of Management at the United Nations Office in Vienna (UNOV), appointed Deputy Director-General of UNOV in 2004, and Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime. In 2009 Baumann was appointed Assistant Secretary-General for General Assembly Affairs.

Baumann is a Senior Fellow and member of the Board of Trustees of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Academic Council on the United Nations System. He obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in management and public administration at the University of Konstanz, and a Ph.D. in Political Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. His doctoral dissertation was on “The Bureaucratic State and Economic Development in Nigeria”.