Vendula Kolarik Mezeiova

Vendula is a DPhil candidate in Socio-Legal Studies supervised by Dr Bettina Lange.

Vendula's doctoral research examines how parents and medical professionals construct the legitimacy of different regulatory approaches to vaccination against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) in France. The research asks what matters for the legitimacy of vaccination regulatory tools besides legal and institutional reasoning. How do those directly involved in lived vaccination practices and interactions, like parents and medical professionals, understand, justify, or contest different regulatory techniques? The research project examines micro-level discourses and regulatory dynamics unfolding in MMR vaccination decision-making, including the intimate imaginaries beyond polarising notions of coercion or autonomy. The project aims to contribute to socio-legal understandings of the legitimacy and power dynamics in different regulatory approaches.

Vendula is a recipient of the Socio-Legal Studies Association PhD Fieldwork Grant, which supports her empirical work in France. In academic year 2024/2025, she is the convenor of the Socio-Legal Discussion Group.

Vendula holds a degree in Law and Jurisprudence from Charles University in Prague and an LLM in Health, Law, and Society from the University of Bristol. She was a researcher in the research project at the University of Vienna, which investigates resistance to authority in media, politics, and science across Europe and the United States (2022-2024). Her professional background includes judicial training at the Supreme Administrative Court of the Czech Republic, where she qualified for the judiciary (2018-2022), and a traineeship at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety (2022-2023). She served as a consultant to the European Commission in the areas of tobacco control, disease prevention, and health promotion (2023-2025).

Vendula’s broader academic interests lie at the intersection of sociology of law, public health, and regulation, with a focus on the role of discourse and emotions.