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Prior to 2021, there were only a minimum of student and worker rights defenders at Czech universities.
The media began to report more and more on cases of gender-based violence on campuses, which had a common denominator: the lack of systemic tools to prevent and address these problems.
This significant climate change has led to a search for a solution to this situation. Different actors began to stress the need for a neutral person who would allow cases of abuse of power or conflicts between teachers and students to be resolved in a credible way.
Ombudsperson or ombudsman for learners' rights have become the most frequently used terms in this context. Currently, you can meet more than fifty people in the Czech Republic in these positions. Some of them also protect workers' rights.
Foreign examples and our own experience show that however meaningful our mission is, we articulate various difficulties at many levels. There may be doubts about our mandate on the one hand, and unrealistic expectations on the other. Ombudsmen's positions tend to be anchored in different ways, which often entails uncertainty.
However, the biggest challenge we face is the loneliness in our work, which is related to its specific nature (confidentiality, anonymity). At our first ombudsmen's colloquium in Prague in 2023, we surveyed the needs related to the protection of learners' and staff rights: all have a common denominator in the high level of need for inspiration, support and networking.
These were the reasons for formally anchoring the platform and launching our activities.
Interview groups moderated by experienced members of the SOP - an opportunity to anonymously share a case and develop
More about interviews
Live meetings, member contacts, digital platform - a community of ombudsmen at universities in the Czech Republic
Standards for the work of ombudsmen, code of ethics, methodological materials on selected topics and issues
More about methodological support
Seminars, webinars or workshops - whether organised by members of the SOP or experts from cooperating organisations.
More about education
His home workplace is the Department of Sociology, Andragogy and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Olomouc. He deals with the issue of social mobility of Roma and qualitative research. In recent years, he has also focused on the impact of the negative aspects of the power asymmetry between teachers and students, which is the main motivation for holding the position of faculty ombudsman. He was elected to the position by the students along with his deputy, Michaela Antonín Malaníková, in November 2020, and is currently the Deputy Ombudsperson. As part of the position of Student Ombudsman, he seeks to develop a proactive approach, including networking nationally and internationally. In 2021, he received training in transformative mediation, which he considers to be one of the excellent tools for conflict resolution also in academic settings. He co-founded the School Ombuds Platform and is currently its chair.
Since August 2022 she has been the ombudsman of the Film and Television Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. She is the Vice-Chair of the School Ombuds Platform and its founding member. Her home and heart disciplines are psychology and psychotherapy, to which she remains fully professionally dedicated. She graduated in Psychology at the Faculty of Arts and Special Education at the Faculty of Education of Masaryk University in Brno. She completed psychotherapeutic training in Gestalt therapy. She has worked professionally in the education, social services and health care sectors. In her profession she appreciates diversity and open possibilities of cognition (of other people, of herself and of professional fields). She works as a supervisor for a team of social service workers. She enjoys group psychotherapy in addition to individual therapy. She has been a volunteer with the White Circle of Safety since 2012.
She teaches history of the Middle Ages at the Department of History at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Prague.Her research interests include urban history, family history and gender history, which have also shaped her activities in the field of civic engagement. From November 2020 to November 2023, she served as deputy ombudsman of the Faculty of Arts of UP, and currently she is the ombudsman/defender of the rights of students of the Faculty of Arts of UP, in both cases in tandem with Jaroslav Šotola. She is a member of the Gender Expert Chamber of the Czech Republic, since 2022 she has been a member of the Board of ENOHE (European Network of Ombudsmen in Higher Education) and also a member of the Committee of the School Ombudsmen Platform of the Czech Republic (SOP).
He comes from Brno and lives with his family in Prague. She studied sociology, political science and law. She worked at the Office of the Government in the Human Rights Section, and during the Czech Presidency in 2009 she negotiated for the EU at the Council of Europe and the UN. After her parental leave, she led the 22% to Equality project on equal pay at the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, worked as a judicial assistant and a law clerk, and is now a lawyer. She has long worked with the non-profit sector (e.g. the Human Rights League, Forum 50 %, Open Society) and academia (e.g. NKC-Gender and Science, the Institute of Sociology of the CAS or Gender Studies of the Faculty of Humanities of the Charles University), participating in meetings of government advisory bodies and training in the field of human rights and equal treatment. She works as an ombudsman at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. She loves people, family, connecting adult and child worlds, sports, politics, culture and faith, truth, love and hope... and freedom and equality.
He works at the Ombudsman's Office as a lawyer, where he currently focuses on accessibility, education and employment of people with disabilities. For eight years, he headed the Equal Treatment Department in the same Office. Between 2015 and 2019, he was a member of the Board of Directors of Equinet, a network of European equality bodies. He is a graduate of the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Arts of Masaryk University, where he also taught externally (2010 - 2018). In his professional career, he has mainly dealt with privacy protection, the administration of the courts and protection against discrimination. He has co-authored several publications, proceedings and scholarly articles. He regularly lectures on discrimination for the European Academy of Law and is a national tutor for the HELP programme of the Council of Europe. Since 2022, he has been an ombudsman at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts and a judge in criminal cases at the Regional Court in Ostrava. In his free time he dances Argentine tango.
Since the beginning of the platform's existence, we have been cooperating with the European Network of Ombudsmen in Higher Education (ENOHE).
Thus, we are adding the Czech Republic to the list of countries where the institution of protection of rights at educational institutions for students and employees is actively developing.
