The first debate sees the University of Bristol and University of Leeds Debating Societies fighting it out over nuclear disarmament, each composing between 800 to 1,000 words to support their argument.

Erudition began as a print publication, founded by students at Bristol, but has evolved into a collection of four magazine-style websites, each covering the broad topics of the economy, politics, science, engineering, travel, arts and culture.

The websites receive over 100,000 unique visitors each month and are popular around the world thanks to their no nonsense style and thought-provoking debates on national and international news.

The debates will be moderated and judged each month by Naomi Prashker, Erudition’s Editor-in-Chief, and her colleague Sally Cervenak, who is the Managing Editor.

Naomi, who is in her final year studying for a French and Philosophy degree at the University of Bristol, explained: “We are enacting a 'winner stays on' policy at the moment, but plan to expand this to a league-table style competition with a more substantial prize once more interest is gathered.

“We are hoping that this new debating competition will be a unique forum for student debate on contemporary social issues, raising the profile of issues pertinent to students and providing an opportunity for student debaters across the UK to publish opinion pieces in a national journal.”

The first debate can be read on the Erudition website.