Dr Anthony Speca

Dr Anthony Speca is Managing Principal of Polar Aspect, a consultancy he founded in 2012. He has advised government particularly on issues of Arctic governance and fiscal policy. He has also published articles on Arctic issues, and he has spoken about the Arctic to various organisations and universities. He has lived and worked in Arctic Canada, and he has travelled elsewhere in the North American and European Arctic.

Anthony views the Arctic first and foremost as a homeland, especially for its Indigenous peoples, where human development and environmental sustainability both matter. Inspired to share this vision of the Arctic with younger generations, in 2016 Anthony created and launched the world’s only secondary-school Model Arctic Council (MAC) programme. He has since offered numerous MAC conferences in collaboration with schools in the UK and Spain, as well as undergraduate MAC conferences in collaboration with universities in the UK and Canada. He also launched an online MAC delegate training and conference programme for schools, and Polar Aspect MACs have reached hundreds of students from many countries.

Anthony combines this innovative educational work with faculty appointments to Norwich School and the University of East Anglia in the UK, and to Trent University in Canada. He has taught Philosophy, Politics, Economics and Geography at upper secondary-school level, and Geography and Circumpolar Studies at university level. He also serves as Managing Director of the Læra Institute for Circumpolar Education, an institute that he helped to establish within the international University of the Arctic.

Anthony has also been involved with government and politics since 2008, when he was appointed as a senior policy official with the Government of Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic. He directed a team of analysts advising politicians and the public on fiscal and economic issues, and he helped strategise negotiations for the devolution of lands and resources from Ottawa. He is now a politician himself, having been elected for the Green Party to East Suffolk Council in the UK, which he also serves as Chair.

Anthony is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Society of Arts. He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto, and he has trained in negotiation and mediation.