Bernadette Somody is associate professor at the Department of Constitutional Law at the Faculty of Law of Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest, Hungary). She teaches and coordinates the main course on fundamental rights and the Inclusion Law Programme. She holds a PhD (2009) based on a thesis on ombudsman institutions, and obtained her habilitation in 2025 with a thesis on developing a conceptual framework for evaluating fundamental rights protection systems. Her research focuses on the theory and doctrine of fundamental rights, the legal protection of the rights of children and persons with disabilities, and institutional guarantees of rights, especially ombudsman-type mechanisms.

She is the Principal Investigator of the research project The Fundamental Rights Concept of Legal Capacity (FULCAP) (2019–2025), Professional Coordinator of CLAP – Children’s Local Affairs Participation (2025–2027), and Project Leader of DOTS – Digital Badges for Transversal Skills (2024–2026). She also teaches in the CHARM-EU Master’s in Global Challenges for Sustainability and has contributed to international research collaborations including TRIIAL 2, focusing on the application of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.

She previously served as Director of the Eötvös Károly Public Policy Institute, was Commissioner for Children’s Rights at the Ministry of Children, Youth and Sports, and worked at the Office of the Commissioner for Educational Rights. She was also employed in multiple periods at the Office of the Hungarian Parliamentary Commissioner for Fundamental Rights. She was a member of the Equal Treatment Advisory Board. She has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Victoria and at Indiana University Bloomington.