This text will briefly introduce the programme's conceptual basis, explaining the methodological steps taken to ensure the comparability of data gathered and the transnational and transcontinental character of the study's design. In the second section, we will zoom in on doctoral students' dissertations, which are the optimal way to study a discipline's development and potential. Doctoral students and recent graduates are part of a tradition, a school of thought, and yet they constitute that tradition's replacement and renewal. Therefore, as graduate students carry forth the disciplinary torch, they hold the future of the field in their hands.