Over the past few years, we have been preparing a Festschrift in honour of Alison Harcourt. I am pleased to see it finally published this month. It is formally the Dec 2025 issue of the Australian & New Zealand Journal of Statistics (ANZJS).

As the Guest Editor of the Festschrift, I greatly enjoyed the chance to interview Alison and find out a lot more about her life, and also to invite many people to contribute articles across a range of topics that celebrate Alison’s areas of achievement. The topics included optimisation, teaching of statistics and statistics in public policy. I believe the Festschrift has ended up being one of the most diverse issues of the ANJZS!

All of the articles are freely available for the next several weeks. I encourage you to browse and read those that interest you.

The best place to start is with our editorial. We give a detailed account of Alison’s contributions and a brief summary of the other articles.