Université Paris-Saclay celebrates its two teams in the final of the French Debating Association Tournament
The final of the prestigious English debating tournament organised annually by the French Debating Association took place on Thursday 10 April 2025 at the Hôtel de Lassay at the Assemblée Nationale. Two teams from Université Paris-Saclay made it to the final this year: the CentraleSupélec Debate Club, a founding member of the university and who won the tournament, and the Université Paris-Saclay Debate Club, made up of students from the Orsay Faculty of Science and Institut d’Optique Graduate School, and included Alex Scofield Teruel, who was awarded the medal for Best Speaker. Université Paris-Saclay is proud of both teams who stood out for the exceptional quality of their performances, both in terms of substance, thanks to the elegance of their arguments, and in terms of style, thanks to their excellent level of English.
First created in 1993 with just four debating teams, the French Debating Association (FDA) tournament is an annual debating competition which now involves 17 universities and grandes écoles. The format was inspired by the debates at the Houses of Parliament in the United Kingdom. FDA debates involve two teams who argue a motion, alternating between “proposition” and “opposition” speakers who take turns to deliver feisty six-minute speeches. They provide spirited arguments as well as rebutting one another in the course of an event that offers more and more space for improvisation and rhetorical amusement to inspire an audience and, above all, convince the members of the jury.
The CentraleSupélec team triumph in 2025
After weeks of debating and hard work, the university’s two teams - the CentraleSupélec and Université Paris-Saclay debating teams, faced each other for the first time in the tournament’s final to debate the motion ”This house believes we owe more to literature than to politics”, in front of a top-level jury which included the ambassadors of Pakistan, Ireland and New Zealand. Both teams impressed the audience with their ability to master the English language and structure their arguments.
Université Paris-Saclay is proud of its students and congratulates the CentraleSupélec team for successfully winning the tournament for the first time, as well as Alex Scofield Teruel, member of the Université Paris-Saclay team, who was awarded the medal for Best Speaker.
The debate teams
The CSDebating team at CentraleSupélec is coached by Divya Madhavan, head of the language department at CentraleSupélec and debate coach. It is made up of two debating teams: a Bachelors team from the Global Engineering programme in partnership with McGill University, and a grande école team which competed in the FDA tournament and is made up of eight students:
- Colombe Archambaud, 2nd year engineering student
- Mathis Dubordeaux, 2nd year engineering student
- Shabbir Houssenaly, 2nd year engineering student
- Anas Lecaillon, 2nd year engineering student
- Capucine Leroy, 2nd year engineering student
- Casimir Najsztat, 2nd year engineering student
- Gabriel Rochette, 2nd year engineering student
- Charlie Ye, 2nd year engineering student.
The Université Paris-Saclay Debate Club is coached by Duncan Thom, English lecturer at the Orsay Faculty of Science. The debate club is a teaching unit offered by the university’s Language Centre (Centre de Langues Mutualisée de l’Université Paris-Saclay) which gives students the opportunity to develop their debating skills in English. This year, the Université Paris-Saclay team was made up of five students from various academic programmes:
- Gustav Dahlgren, 3rd undergraduate student in Biology & Health at the Orsay Faculty of Science
- Christiana Papadopoulou, 2nd year undergraduate student in Chemistry at the Orsay Faculty of Science
- Enzo Sichi, 2nd year Master’s student at Institut d’Optique Graduate School
- Alex Scofield Teruel, double degree Computing & Mathematics student at the Orsay Faculty of Science
- Armand Tomasella, 3rd year undergraduate student in Biology & Health at the Orsay Faculty of Science.
Congratulations to both teams and see you next year for another edition of the FDA tournament!
