It was a real pleasure to spend a few hours today online with a group of students from Trent University taking an introductory course on the Arctic. I ran a very small Model Arctic Council (MAC) simulation for them, in which they played the roles of diplomats grappling with Arctic issues at a meeting of the Arctic Council—in this case, the growth of Arctic shipping.

The simulation was a bit like my secondary-school MACs, NORMAC and MAC Bilbao. But given the format and strict time-constraints, delegates focused mainly on sketching out what a jointly-agreed Arctic Council declaration on the issue of Arctic shipping might look like in broad outline. It was my first time doing MAC online—or any type of model diplomacy for that matter—and I think it worked well. Many thanks to Prof Heather Nicol from Trent for inviting me into her course.

I’m especially excited about this university-level ‘mini-MAC’, as in just a week I’ll be launching my first full university MAC, NORMAC University in collaboration with Trent University and the University of East Anglia. Stay tuned!