Curta works in the field of the Balkan history and is a Professor of Medieval History and Archaeology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida.^[1] Curta’s first book, The Making of the Slavs. History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, A.D. 500–700, was named a 2002 Choice Outstanding Academic Title and won the Herbert Baxter Adams Award of the American Historical Association in 2003.^[2] Curta is the editor-in-chief of the Brill series East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450–1450.^[2] He is a member in the Institute for Advanced Study, School of Historical Studies, Princeton University (Spring 2007) and a visiting fellow, Corpus Christi College, Oxford University (2015). He attends an Eastern Orthodox Christian parish.^[3]

Being inspired by Reinhard Wenskus and Vienna School of History, Curta is known for his usage of post-processual and post-structuralist approach in explaining Slavic ethnogenesis and migrations by which is arguing against the mainstream view and primordial culture-historical approach in archaeology and historiography.^[4][5][6][7] Curta argues against the Slavic mass expansion from the Slavic Urheimat and denies the existence of the Slavic Urheimat, Slavic language as unifying element of the Slavs, Prague-type ceramics as an archaeological cultural expression of the Early Slavs among others. He is advancing instead an alternative hypothesis which considers the Slavs as an "ethno-political category" invented by the Byzantines which was formed by political instrumentation and interaction on the Roman Danubian frontier where flourished barbarian elite culture.^{[4][8][9][10][11]} It was met with substantial disagreement and "severe criticism in general and in detail" by other archaeologists and historians who noted Curta's arbitrary selection of archaeological sites, data and interpretation of chronologies to support his preconceived conclusions and cultural model which fails to explain the emergence and spread of the Slavs and Slavic culture.^{[12][13][14][15][16]} The migrationist model remains as the most acceptable and possible to explain the spread of the Slavs as well as Slavic culture (including language),^[8][17] but Curta's work did spark a new scientific debate and found support by those who use similar approach, like Walter Pohl and Danijel Dzino.^[12][18]

• Curta, Florin (1998). Making an Early Medieval Ethnie: The Case of the Early Slavs (Sixth to Seventh Century A.D.). Kalamazoo, Michigan: Western Michigan University. (Doctoral Dissertation)
• Curta, Florin (2001). The Making of the Slavs: History and Archaeology of the Lower Danube Region, c. 500–700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Curta, Florin (2001). "Limes and Cross: The Religious Dimension of the Sixth-century Danube Frontier of the Early Byzantine Empire". Старинар. 51: 45–70.
• Curta, Florin (2006). Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1250. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-81539-0.
• Curta, Florin (2011). The Edinburgh History of the Greeks, c. 500 to 1050: The Early Middle Ages. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Curta, Florin (2019). Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages (500-1300). Leiden and Boston: Brill.
• Curta, Florin (2020). Slavs in the Making: History, Linguistics, and Archaeology in Eastern Europe (ca. 500-ca. 700). London: Routledge.

Edited volumesEdit

• East Central & Eastern Europe in the Early Middle Ages. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
• Borders, Barriers, and Ethnogenesis. Frontiers in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2005.
• The other Europe in the Middle Ages. Avars, Bulgars, Khazars, and Cumans. Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2008.
• Neglected Barbarians. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011.
• with Bogdan-Petru Maleon, The Steppe Lands and the World Beyond Them. Studies in Honor of Victor Spinei on his 70th Birthday. Iași: Editura Universității "Alexandru Ioan Cuza", 2013.