2025 Theme: Playful Learning
We invite you to attend the second annual Sydney Games and Play Lab Winter School for PhD students and early career researchers, to be held in-person on Thursday July 24th and Friday July 25th 2025 at The University of Sydney. We encourage scholars from game studies, education, and related fields to attend.
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
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 2025 Winter School Keynote Speakers and Distinguished Scholars are Professors Kurt Squire and Constance Steinkuehler from the Connected Learning Lab at the University of California, Irvine. They research, design, and mobilise videogames and other learning technologies in equitable, innovative, and learner-centred ways in order to advance cognition, support wellbeing, and promote deep learning.
Kurt Squire is an expert on learning with technology. He has directed several game-based learning projects, ranging from ARIS, a tool for place-based mobile app development, to ProgenitorX, a game about saving the world from zombies through stem cell technology.
Constance Steinkueler researches the cognitive and social aspects of multiplayer online videogames and esports. Current projects include studies of teenage boys and gameplay, parenting and videogames, and impacts of the NASEF high school esports league. She formerly served as Senior Policy Analyst under the Obama administration in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, advising on games and digital media, and founded the Higher Education Video Games Alliance (HEVGA), a national network of game-related programs.
Expert speakers and advisors will include Professor Marcus Carter (USYD, ARC Future Fellow), Associate Professor Jen Scott Curwood (USYD), Dr Ben Egliston (USYD, ARC DECRA Fellow), Professor Michael Anderson (USYD, CREATE Centre), Dr Louise Thornton (USYD, Matilda Centre), Dr Premeet Sidhu (USYD), and Dr Nataliya Gorbina (University of Konstanz).
2025 Theme: Playful Learning
The theme for the 2025 Games and Play Lab Winter School is Playful Learning, which includes (but not limited to):
- Learning through play in both formal and informal environments.
- Children’s and adults’ engagement with play and its impact on learning and interaction.
- Playful approaches to pedagogy in schools and other education contexts.
- The development of games and other resources to promote meaningful, critical, and collaborative learning.
- Theoretical and methodological approaches to examining the intersection of learning and play.
In the face of these rapidly developing, critically significant topics we note a developing interdisciplinary understanding of playful learning that shapes the production, consumption, critique, and integration of games in learning contexts. The goal of the second annual Sydney Games and Play Lab Winter School will be to provide an intellectual overview and introduction to playful learning, 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 education 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 in education 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.
The Winter School will be an in-person event, on campus at The University of Sydney.
Key Dates
10 April – Applications Due
24 April – Notifications of Acceptance Issued
1 June – Registration Deadline
24 & 25 July – Winter School