The field of health professions education research draws inspiration from many disciplines, creating a dynamic socio-cultural context that is replete with contests over research rigour and quality. These knowledge politics are never definitively resolved. Thus, an important question that any graduate program established within the field has to contend with is what should constitute expertise in HPER [health professions education research]. In this paper we explore interrelated contextual, conceptual and procedural dimensions of expertise to substantiate our suggestions for a core curriculum for graduate students in health professions education. We argue that an expert in health professions education research should have both an appreciation of when knowledge politics are relevant to their research process as part of their procedural knowledge and also an awareness of why these politics can affect their work as part of their conceptual knowledge.