Dr David Corlett has worked with refugees and asylum seekers for about two decades as a case worker, researcher and advisor. He currently works as a researcher with the International Detention Coalition.

In 2003, he completed a doctoral thesis on Australia's response to asylum seekers. He is the co-author of Quarterly Essay 13: Sending Them Home – Refugees and the New Politics of Indifference (with Robert Manne), and author of Following Them Home: The Fate of the Returned Asylum Seekers, which was highly commended by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission – and Stormy Weather: The challenge of climate change and displacement. 

His writing has also appeared in the UNSW Law Journal, the Monthly, the Age and the Canberra Times.