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SPAIS students at Model NATO Youth Summit

19 July 2012

MSc International Relations students Astrid Holzinger, Sarah Kerrigan, Adrienne Leung, Tyler Olinski, Charlotte Langridge, and Thomas Hoare represented the University of Bristol as the Hungarian delegation at the Model NATO Youth Summit in Brussels on 8–13 July, 2012.

The University of Bristol delegation was chosen from hundreds of applications to participate in the first simulation of the NATO decision-making process in Europe and one of the largest in the world.  The simulation provides the students with the opportunity to apply their academic knowledge to a practical situation while simultaneously exposing them to new insights on key security and defence issues. 

Bristol was one of only two English universities to have a delegation at the summit.

SPAIS student, Tom Hoare, reported:

“Most of the communiques from the committees that were escalated to the North Atlantic Council had Hungarian/Bristol sponsorship, and our Ambassador (Astrid Holzinger) won the award for best position paper in the NAC.

Aside from the simulation process we had staggering access to NATO, being addressed by Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at NATO headquarters, meeting with a permanent representative of the Hungarian delegation to NATO, visiting the European Parliament for a debrief on the recent Chicago Summit by NATO representatives, and attending the MoNYS opening ceremony at the Royal Military Academy.

We also received generous funding from the Bristol University Alumni Trust to enable us to participate in MoNYS.

We were also pleased to find out that the NATO public diplomacy representative that addressed the summit at NATO HQ, Charles Andreo, is a recent Bristol IR MSc graduate.”