by Lisa Baumgartner
For three years, our team from the Media Governance Lab at the University of Vienna has brought research on games, participation and digital cultures into the classrooms of KinderUni Wien (Vienna Children’s University). Across eight workshops in English, German and Turkish, we welcomed 145 children, exploring video games from different perspectives each year.
Our first workshop, in 2024, took place only a few months after the GAMEHEARTS project launched. Under the title “Participation and Creativity in Video Gaming”, we hosted two workshops in English and German, with almost 40 children exploring gaming, online safety and digital citizenship. Through quizzes, discussions and our offline “Cyberheroes” game, the kids created characters with various “superpowers” and worked together to navigate challenges in a fictional gaming world. The workshop reflected one of GAMEHEARTS’ central interests: understanding children not simply as users of digital media, but as active participants in digital cultures and as citizens whose lives extend across online and offline spaces.
In 2025, we built on these ideas with “Game Changers Like You!”. Three workshops brought together 56 children aged 10-12, this time in English, German and Turkish. We turned our attention towards representation and diversity in games. Children discussed their favourite characters, considered what makes a character memorable and thought about why it matters who and what we see in games. They then designed their own characters, exploring identity, diversity and expression. The activities connected to our research into the cultural and social dimensions of gaming, while also giving us the opportunity to listen to how children themselves understand the games and characters they encounter.
For our final year, “Gaming for the Future” brought 49 children into three workshops across the same three languages. This time, we looked behind the games themselves and pulled back the curtain on who actually makes them. From game designers and programmers to artists, writers, sound designers, producers and testers, the kids discovered how many people with different skillsets and perspectives are needed to make a game. The workshop encouraged children to consider their own interests and strengths and how these might connect to the games industry.
Looking back, the progression of the workshops reflects the development of GAMEHEARTS itself. We began with questions of participation and responsible citizenship in gaming spaces, moved towards representation and creativity, and finally explored the people, skills and collaborative processes behind game production.
The workshops also became a space for us, as researchers, to experiment with different ways of communicating science. Across the three years, members of the team took on various roles: from leading and presenting, to facilitating activities and discussions, to actually stepping back and observing how children responded. Moving between these perspectives gave us an amazing experience and insight of what it means to bring research into a room with young people. It reminded us that science communication is not simply about finding the right way to explain something, but also about creating opportunities for children to contribute, question and shape the conversation.
At the Media Governance and Industries Research Lab, we see children as young citizens with experiences, perspectives and ideas worth listening to. KinderUni gives us a space to communicate research beyond the university and, just as importantly, to learn from the people we are communicating with. Over the years, the children’s questions, ideas and responses have become part of how we think about games, participation and digital cultures.
This year marked the final GAMEHEARTS contribution to KinderUni, but the experience has reinforced our commitment at the Lab to treating science communication as a dialogue: one in which young people are not simply recipients of knowledge, but participants in producing it. We are grateful to every child who questioned, created and challenged us along the way, and to the KinderUni team for continuing to make space for young, curious minds at the university. As GAMEHEARTS comes to an end, we look back on these three years not only as a record of what we taught, but of what we learned together.
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