Victoria Schmidt has a PhD in Developmental Psychology (1998, Russian Academy of Education) and a PhD in Social work and Social policy (2012, Masaryk University) which focussed on residential care and its alternatives to various target groups of children and adolescents: those with disability, abused and neglected, and in conflict with the law. She has participated in more than ten projects concerning residential care and enforced intervention with families and children in post-socialist countries. Dr Schmidt has published several articles in international journals, and chapters and monographs aimed at building the post-socialist case into a global context. In addition, she has prepared several policy papers regarding the reform of correctional institutions for children in conflict with the law and developing civil control under residential care. In 2015,supported by Stephan Bathory Foundation, Poland, Dr Schmidt conducted the survey 'Female activism in Belarus: Invisible and Untouchable'.The report has been included into the final conference of the EU project 'Bleeding Love' and aims to contribute to the prevention of domestic and dating violence against lesbians, bisexual women and transwomen in selected countries in the EU.
In the past five years, Dr Schmidt has been working on the issue of segregation of Roma children in the Czech lands. Her most recent book, Child welfare discourses and practices in the Czech lands: the segregation of Roma and disabled children during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is a study of the path dependence of policies in many post-socialist countries regarding social care, education and welfare policy towards the most vulnerable groups and Roma including the disabled.