What does consent look like, today? This was the guiding question behind the Potter Museum of Art’s Interdisciplinary Forum, CONSENT. Over the last decade, we have seen a seismic shift in society’s understanding of consent across interpersonal, institutional, colonial, and environmental contexts – let alone that of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which this project was initially conceived. The conversation continues to be urgent and contested. Questions of agency, respect, recognition, sovereignty, visibility, and empathy remain at its core.

Edited by Annika Aitken and Kyla McFarlane, this reader draws on the voices of colleagues from the University of Melbourne – leading minds in criminology, creative writing, marketing, law, digital ethics and computing, science and technology, health, and design – alongside a broader collection of creative contributions. Like the forum that preceded it, CONSENT, A Reader – the first in a series of collaborative publications from the Potter Museum of Art and Perimeter Editions – is not the final word on the subject. Rather, it is a polyphonic compendium, and a space for reflection and changing perspectives.