Nina Demily and Eloïse Borreman, winning speakers at the inaugural "Intersection" contest
This evening represented the culmination of a public speaking training project organised for the students of these three Masters programmes. Before an enthusiastic audience of 250 people, the six finalist pairs engaged in an oratorical contest by presenting a six-minute debate-format epideictic speech defending a topic and a motion (for or against).
The audience was therefore able to watch Emy Windels and Thelma Duval speak in favour of the motion "Are our illusions really losing us" in opposition to to Saskia Segonds and Sheryl Sümer who defended the contradictory position; the motion "Is the joker really a trump?" was tackled by Hind Makoudi and Golnousch Nematkhah (for) and Nina Demily and Elöise Borreman (against); finally, Daphné De Groote and Anne-Catherine Lebecq argued in favour of the motion "Is there a pilot on the plane?", while Sydney Jara and Adrien Provost defended the opposite position.
At the end of the evening, the jury comprising public speaking experts evaluated the performance of the six finalist pairs. This exceptional jury was composed of:
- Laure Englebert, Director of Studies at IHECS
- Véronique Salvi, Professor of Political Communication at IHECS, in charge of strategic development at UCLouvain and consultant for HELha
- Maya Cham, host at Jam RTBF
- Siham Najmi, lawyer and cultural critic
- Gilles Dal, Doctor of History and visiting professor at IHECS
After deliberation by the jury, the duo of Nina Demily and Eloïse Borreman were announced as winners of this inaugural edition of the "Intersection" speech contest and received a prize awarded by the CEHEG.
The "Intersection" project is the result of a collaboration between Alexia Baum (PR academic manager), Barbara Dupont (Masters in Cultural and Social Communication academic manager), Emmanuel Wathelet (head of the Media Literacy department), Clémentine Quevy (Réciproque project manager) and Monia Gandibleux (professor of the course in debating and public speaking in PR and founder of Ambassadeurs d’Expression Citoyenne), who all share a common vision: to create the conditions conducive to the meeting of students from the three Masters programmes through learning public speaking.
We would like to congratulate the twelve finalists of the contest, and express our gratitude to the three MCs and the students who contributed to the organisation of this memorable evening: Amina Derouich, Alexandre Foerster, Rachel Mabibi Manene, Claire Pichon, Sacha Pereira da Costa, Isaline Cornette, Joséphine Lesceux, Zoé Marlair, Anaïs Messina, Betty Pleinevaux, Mortimer Raz, Loula Rota, Gabrielle Vanderbruggen and Romain De Moor. Finally, we would like to thank the entire Réciproque team and Ambassadeurs d’Expression Citoyenne, in particular Clémentine Quevy, Monia Gandibleux, Ara Ter Stepania and Guillaume Beeckman.
If, at IHECS, the practice of the media is self-evident, the word 'alone' is now also celebrated: eloquence is of course an art of communication – an art that is shared between departments.
