DK Wien are ESL World Champions - DK Wien sind ESL Weltmeister!

Our amazing winners - Paula Breyer (left) and Marina Kojić (right). Photo credit to Mauricio Herrera and Jorge Blázquez.

Starting the year off with a bang: At this year’s World University Debating Championships (27.12.22 – 04.01.23), DK Wien A (Marina and Paula) managed to climb all the way to the top! After nine inrounds, they broke second to the “English as a Second Language” (ESL) category on 16 teampoints.

After advancing through the semifinals, Marina and Paula faced off on Opening Government against KNUST A (from Ghana), Ghana A and Zagreb C in the ESL Final on January 3, where they argued whether feminists should refrain from critiquing widespread religious practices that have different rules based on gender when they are not part of that religion. You can rewatch the debate here. Finally, after enjoying the Open Final and biting our nails through most of the awards ceremony, DK Wien’s win was announced late on Tuesday night to loud rejoycing in Spain and a flood of excited messages back in Vienna, followed by Marina winning the “Sadiq Ayinde Award” for the best speech in the ESL Final. Well done for bringing home such historic results!

Our second team at Worlds, Victor and Mira, were still in the game all the way until Round 8, where by a phenomenal stroke of bad luck, they ended up in the same room as DK Wien A. Still, we’re very proud of the 13 team points they managed to amass over the nine inrounds of stiff competition! Last but absolutely not least, Theo and Miri broke among the 76 top judges, and each panelled a Partial Double-Octofinal – with Theo especially, a comparatively new debater and judge, beating out many established judges! Congrats to everyone – let’s see where 2023 takes us!

You can read our press release here, and catch up on all the motions and other stats on the tab.

Our wonderful WUDC delegation, from left to right: Victor, Mira, Anna, Miri, Marina, Paula, Samuel and Theo