Michael Corbett has worked as a professor in the School of Education at Acadia University since 2002. He has studied of rural outmigration, youth educational decision making, the politics of educational assessment, literacies in rural contexts, improvisation and the arts in education, the position of rural identities and experience in education, conceptions of space, place and mobilities, and the viability of small rural schools. He has published widely both in academic venues and for educational and policy and practice audiences. Corbett has worked with rural communities and schools in Australia and Canada as well as doing international comparative work in Norway and Finland. Between 2015 and 2018 he served as Professor or Rural and Regional Education at the University of Tasmania where he also holds an adjunct professorship.