For the eleventh time, the Leiden Debating Union will host the Leiden Open. The tournament will last from February 28 to March 1 and features five preliminary rounds and breaks into semi-finals as well as a novice final. The tournament will be on Saturday and Sunday, but there will be a social on Friday night. A detailed schedule will be announced soon on the tournament’s facebook event.

There will be one Chief Adjudicator (CA) with three Deputy Chief Adjudicators (DCAs):

CA Daan Welling won last year’s Leiden Open and was a finalist at the World Universities Debating Championships (WUDC) in Berlin 2013. He has been the CA of Trinity IV 2014 and the Edinburgh-Cup 2014, among others.

DCA Emilia Carlqvist was champion at the European University Debating Championships (EUDC) 2013 in Manchester in the category English as a Second Language (ESL). She will also be DCA of next year’s Vienna EUDC and the CA of Warsaw EUDC the year after that.

DCA Matthew Willmore was champion of the Zagreb EUDC 2014. He has also won the Strathclyde Cup and been a finalist at Paris Open and Cardiff IV, among others.

DCA Helena Ivanov was ESL champion of Zagreb EUDC and ESL finalist of Chennai WUDC 2014; Leiden Open’s novice final was the first final she has won. She will be the CA of Budapest 2015 and Moscow Open 2015.

The registration fee is €30 for speakers; it is free for judges. The n-1 judging rule applies only to Dutch institutions. The organizers only guarantee crash accommodation for team from outside the Netherlands, but will try to accommodate everyone. The team cap of 60 with an institutional team cap of five might be expanded.

For Registration, there are Google Docs for speakers and for judges. To contact the conveners, send an E-mail to leidenopen2015 [at] gmail [dot] com.

Information in a nutshell:

• Date: Feb. 28 – March 1
• Rounds: Five; Semi-finals + novice final
• CA team: Daan Welling, Emilia Carlqvist, Matthew Willmore, Helena Ivanov
• Equity Officer, Tabmaster: tba.
• Team cap: 60
• Registration fee: €30 (free for judges)

 hug