John MacInnes is emeritus professor of Sociology and Statistics at the University of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and a Chartered Statistician. He was Vice President of the Royal Statistical Society (2019-2020), Strategic Advisor to the ESRC and British Academy on quantitative skills development, and helped develop the UK Q-Step programme. His substantive research interests have ranged from social demography to gender studies, nationalism and employment relations, confirming John Tukey’s claim that statisticians get to play in everyone’s backyard.