2026 Theme: Child’s Play
We invite you to attend the third annual Sydney Games and Play Lab Winter School for PhD students and early career researchers, to be held in-person on Monday July 6th and Tuesday July 7th 2026 at The University of Sydney. We encourage scholars from all fields relating to children’s play to attend, including but not limited to game studies, media studies, education, design and human-computer interaction.
The Games and Play Lab Winter School is an opportunity for PhD students and early career researchers studying games to share their work, benefit from in-depth feedback, and learn from established and emerging research leaders in the field of game studies.
The goal of the Winter School is to help emerging scholars navigate the complex interdisciplinary field of game studies, in addition to providing much-needed opportunities for career development and mentorship. The Winter School fosters career-long connections with researchers from Australia as well as overseas.
Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in a series of masterclass workshops led by expert speakers, as well as present on their own doctoral work for feedback and constructive critique. The Sydney Games and Play Lab Winter School will also include an inclusive programme of social events for networking, mentoring, and meeting other researchers in game studies.
Registration is free.
Previous Winter Schools
2025 – Playful Learning ft. Kurt Squire, Constance Steinkueler & Alex Bacalja
2024 – Money! ft. Stephanie Boluk, Patrick Lemieux, Brendan Keogh & Mahli-Ann Butt
Keynote Speakers and Expert Advisors
The Sydney Games and Play Lab Winter School is hosted with support from the University of Sydney, and the Australian Research Council. Each year, the Games and Play Lab Winter School will have an invited expert commentators at the forefront of games research.
Our 2026 Winter School Keynote Speakers and Distinguished Scholars are Professor Lisa Kervin from Monash University and Dr Stephanie Harkin from RMIT University.
Lisa Kervin is a leading scholar in early childhood education and an ARC Future Fellow researching intergenerational play. She has particular expertise in children’s museums as social living labs, drawing on experience in establishing museum spaces and leading research programs within them. She has served as Chief Investigator on six Australian Research Council Discovery Projects and was a founding Chief Investigator with the Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, where her research examines children’s play, digital literacy, and digital engagement. In 2024, Lisa was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the King’s Birthday Honours for her significant contributions to tertiary education and early childhood digital literacy research.
Stephanie Harkin researches feminine gaming cultures and digital histories. Her research is interdisciplinary and archival, and has involved collaboration with preservation initiatives and institutions including the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA), the Play it Again Project, and the AUS EaaSI (Emulation as a Service Infrastructure) network. She is the author of the monograph Girlhood Games: Gender, Identity, and Coming of Age in Video Games (De Gruyter, 2025) and has published in journals including Feminist Media Studies, Game Studies, Games & Culture, Girlhood Studies, and Journal of Femininities. She is the lead curator for Feminine Play, an exhibition that celebrates femininity and subverts gendered traditions. Her research philosophy is steered towards accounting for the unaccounted.
Expert speakers and advisors will include Professor Marcus Carter (USYD, ARC Future Fellow) and Dr Ben Egliston (USYD, ARC DECRA Fellow).
2026 Theme: Child’s Play
The theme for the 2025 Games and Play Lab Winter School is Child’s Play, which includes (but is not limited to):
- Material histories of children’s play
- Intergenerational play
- Designing games for children
- Play in the classroom
- Digital childhoods
- Gendered childhoods
- Monetisation practices of games designed for children
With these critically significant and underrepresented topics in mind, we invite an interdisciplinary understanding of child’s play that attends to today’s rapid cultural shifts, revisits historical discourses, and accounts for children across the production, consumption and regulation of digital media.
The goal of the third annual Sydney Games and Play Lab Winter School will be to provide an intellectual overview and introduction to child’s play, alongside a broader career development focus and game studies doctoral consortium.
Attendees’ research does not need to focus on the theme to be accepted. Rather, each year’s theme will indicate the focus of the keynote speakers and some masterclasses; a topic that we believe is relevant to all emerging scholars in the fields of childhood research and game studies. Other masterclasses are more general in nature, focusing on publishing and mentorship. Attendees will be selected based on the quality of their work researching childhood and game studies and potential for benefit from the Winter School, not on alignment to the theme.
Application Process
Attendees are asked to submit a short statement of interest (max 250 words) on what they hope to get out of the winter school, and a research abstract (up to 250 words) describing the topic of their Masters or PhD. For recently graduated Early Career Researchers, a 250-word research abstract describing their ongoing research interests is suitable.
Applications can be made through this link. Applications close April 1.
The Winter School will be an in-person event, on campus at The University of Sydney.
Key Dates
1 April – Applications Due
24 April – Notifications of Acceptance Issued
1 June – Registration Deadline
6 and 7 July – Winter School