Festschrift initiative: celebrating Emeritus Professor Ruth Fincher AM

Professional and society journals often publish obituaries in which colleaguesreflect on and celebrate the lives of others—in this instance, geographers—who are no longer with us and who have been closely associated with adiscipline and sometimes also with a country or region. Less often do journaleditors and contributors curate collections of works that recognise and reflectupon the sustained contributions made by colleagues who are still with us.Festschrift offerings such as the kind I am thinking of are almost unheard ofin this journal. We begin to remedy that gap now because such offerings showcolleagues’ influences on us and the discipline. To those ends, this inauguraloffering celebrating Ruth Fincher initiates what I hope will be the first of manyin coming years