A Research Award is one of the most common individual delegate awards given at Model UN conferences, recognizing a delegate who demonstrated exceptional command of facts, history, and policy detail on their committee's topics. Unlike the Best Delegate award — which weighs diplomacy, negotiation, and overall impact — the Research Award singles out substantive depth: accurate citations of treaties, voting records, statistics, and the assigned country's or character's actual positions.
Chairs typically look for several signals when deciding the Research Award:
- Position paper quality — well-sourced, properly footnoted, and grounded in the country's real foreign policy rather than generic talking points.
- Floor speeches — references to specific resolutions, agencies, dates, or domestic legislation rather than vague appeals.
- Working papers and draft resolutions — operative clauses that cite existing UN mechanisms, funding bodies, or legal frameworks accurately.
- Moderated caucus interventions — ability to correct factual errors, supply context, and answer pointed questions from the dais.
The award is sometimes called Outstanding Research, Best Position Paper, or Most Knowledgeable Delegate, depending on the circuit. On the North American collegiate circuit, conferences like NMUN, HNMUN, and WorldMUN frequently include a research-focused honor, often tied directly to the position paper score. High school circuits such as NAIMUN, BMUN, and ILMUNC use similar categories.
Strategically, the Research Award is attainable for delegates who may not dominate bloc politics but who consistently anchor committee discussion in verifiable fact. Crisis committees reward research differently — chairs there value plausible historical or technical detail in directives and backroom notes. Delegates pursuing this award are typically advised to build a one-page fact sheet per topic, memorize three to five key statistics, and cite at least two primary sources (UN documents, treaty text, or government white papers) in every major speech.
It is usually announced alongside Best, Outstanding, and Honorable Mention at closing ceremonies.
Example
At HNMUN 2023, the delegate representing Norway in the UNEP committee received the Research Award for citing specific Arctic Council declarations and IPCC AR6 figures throughout debate.