Kateřina Ochodková

PhD Candidate in Constitutional Law and Theory of State at Masaryk University, Czech Republic

 

I'm Kateřina, a PhD candidate in Constitutional Law and Theory of State at Masaryk University in Brno. My research focuses on election law and the constitutional aspects of electoral systems. Now in the final stage of my studies, I am joining the Wirth Institute to complete my thesis on the electoral integrity of postal voting systems in Europe, esp. in the Visegrád Group countries. Beyond electoral matters, I'm interested in theoretical and legal questions of political participation and representation, the methodology of legal research, and academic rights and freedoms.

In my thesis, I approach postal voting from the perspective of comparative law. I study constitutional court decisions on postal voting across more than a dozen European jurisdictions, as well as the legal frameworks and implementation of postal voting systems in Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Having studied both law and political science, I'm drawn to interdisciplinary research and look forward to the Institute’s interdisciplinary environment.

Before joining the Institute, I was a researcher at Masaryk University’s Judicial Studies Institute (JUSTIN) within the project Beyond Security: Role of Conflict in Resilience-Building, which I will resume after returning to Czechia. In 2025, I was a Junior Fellow of the Electoral Integrity Project alongside my studies and work. That same year I spent a month and a half as an early-career visiting scholar at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law in Oñati, Spain. Beyond academia, I have volunteered on election-observation missions with Agora Election Observation, most recently in the 2026 Hungarian parliamentary elections.