David Crowley has a specialist interest in the art and design of Eastern Europe under communist rule and has written a number of books on this theme including Warsaw (Reaktion, 2003); Style and Socialism: Modernity and Material Culture in Post-War Eastern Europe (co-edited volume, Berg, 2000) and Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc (co-edited with Susan Reid, Berg, 2002). He is the editor – with Susan Reid – of Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure and Luxury in Eastern Bloc (Northwestern University Press, 2010).

David Crowley regularly curates exhibitions. In 2008 he was the co-curator of Cold War Modern: Design 1945–1970 at the Victoria and Albert Museum (touring to the Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto and the National Gallery in Vilnius in 2009). His exhibition on the life and work of Roman Cieslewicz opened at the Royal College of Art in London in July 2010. Another show on the connections of experimental art to music in Eastern Europe in the 1960s entitled Sounding the Body Electric will open at the National Museum in Warsaw in the summer of 2011.

A regular writer in the art and design press, his articles have been published in Eye, Creative Review, Icon, New Statesman and The Economist as well as in various academic journals including Kritika, Journal of Design History and The Journal of Contemporary History.

David Crowley is currently writing a book on the intertwined histories of photography and communism.