An active member of the field of musicology, Carter is a department chair at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he holds the position of David G. Frey Distinguished Professor.
He has worked on the editorial boards or staffs of a number of prominent musical publications and has published extensively in the field.
In 2001, he took a position as Distinguished Professor and Chair in the music department of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
In addition to editing and publishing various books and papers, he is active in several journals in his field.
He is on the editorial boards of Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, Early Music, Cambridge Opera Journal, Studi musicali toscani: ricerche e cataloghi and Cambridge Studies in Opera.