This paper explores the embodied practices of leading researchers (and/or leading scholars/practitioners), suggesting that distinctive "researcher-led teaching" depends on educators who are willing and able to be their research in the teaching setting. We advocate an approach to the development of higher education pedagogy which makes lead-researchers the objects of inquiry and we summarise case-study analyses (in neuroscience and humanities) where the knowledge-making "signatures" of academic leaders are used to exhibit the otherwise hidden identities of research. We distinguish between learning ready-made knowledge and the process of knowledge in the making and point towards the importance of inquiry in the flesh. We develop a view of higher education teaching that depends upon academic status a priori, but we argue that this stance is inclusive because it has the propensity to locate students as participants in academic culture.