David Ciarlo specializes in the social and cultural history of modern Germany, the history of European imperialism and racism, and the history of visual culture and mass culture in European and global contexts. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2003 where he was the Merle Curti Graduate Lecturer and held numerous fellowships, including a Fulbright. After teaching at M.I.T. for a number of years, he joined the University of Cincinnati's History Department in 2009.

His first book, Advertising Empire: Colonialism, Commerce and Visual Culture in Germany, 1887-1914, will come out with Harvard University Press in 2010. This book uses visual archives to trace the interconnected histories of commercial culture and colonial culture in Germany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It shows how overseas engagements helped to forge new commercial practices in Germany; and it also argues that, ultimately, mass-produced, commercialized visions of racial difference would overwhelm other non-commercial fonts of imagery, with profound (and pernicious) consequences for what ordinary Germans saw on a daily basis in the years leading up to the First World War.

A new research project explores the intersection of consumer culture and propaganda in Germany during the First World War. Tentatively titled "Selling War: Advertising, Propaganda, and the Roots of Fascism in German Visual Culture, 1914-1923," it takes up where Advertising Empire left off, charting the trends of commercial culture in the early years of the war, and exploring the link between commerce and the development of visual propaganda techniques.