ABOUT US
An eight-year journey to understand the new generations
What is Footprints?
Footprints is a long-term international research project that studies young people's values, beliefs, and expectations across diverse cultural and religious contexts. Founded in 2022 at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, the project is designed as an eight-year programme of continuous listening — not a one-off study, but a sustained conversation with the new generations.
The name says it all: we follow young people's footprints across time and across the world, tracing the paths they are drawing for themselves in matters of faith, work, and relationships.
Footprints combines large-scale quantitative surveys with qualitative research — focus groups, in-depth questionnaires, and expert workshops — to produce findings that are both statistically robust and humanly meaningful. The result is a layered portrait of young people that goes beyond headlines and stereotypes.
The project is structured in three consecutive two-year phases, each centred on a key dimension of young people's lives: faith and religion (2023–2025), work and civic engagement (2025–2027), and core relationships (2027–2029). The cycle closes with an international congress in 2030, where findings from all three phases will be presented and discussed together.