The centrality of research and innovation in the sustainable development of the knowledge society has led to a policy focus on the roles and responsibilities of the researcher. Drawing on a number of policy documents, an account is given of how the researcher is currently understood. This is placed within the definition of the current governmental order as inscribing an environmental-ecological self-understanding. The discussion of current policy, and a focus on the particular device of the Researcher Development Framework, illustrates how the environmental-ecological self-understanding forms part of a wider governmental rationality, to which a particular understanding of research and the researcher are central.