DEPOLARIZE shortlisted for the McCloy Award"Speaking Across Differences" award winner to be announced on July 19

10 June 2026

Fifteen initiatives have been shortlisted for the McCloy Alumni Association’s “Speaking Across Differences” Award. The Open Society Initiative is on this list with our DEPOLARIZE project!

In our DEPOLARIZE project, we aim to identify the psychosocial mechanisms that effectively promote depolarization and to provide corresponding tools in a toolkit for this purpose. With this goal in mind, we have been shortlisted for the McCloy Award “Speaking Across Differences”!

About the award

“Knowledge alone will not save democracy—we must learn to talk to one another again. Under this motto, the McCloy Association is awarding the “Speaking Across Differences” Award for the first time ever this year. The ability to foster understanding and communication across social or political divides is central to social cohesion and a functioning democracy. Through this award, the association aims to contribute to overcoming ideological isolation, social fragmentation, and digital echo chambers.

The award honors outstanding initiatives that innovatively and successfully put “speaking across differences” into practice: for example, dialogue formats, participatory projects, multi-stakeholder formats, civil society work, political education, or technology-based approaches that foster the courage and ability to achieve mutual understanding—across political, cultural, social, or national divides. The award aims to help bring innovative approaches into the discourse, increase visibility, and build bridges between academia and practice. The award comes with a one-time prize of 10,000 EUR." (McCloy Alumni Association, transl. sam)

Update: Unfortunately, we did not receive the award, but we are still delighted to have been shortlisted.