Aers taught at the University of East Anglia before going to Duke in the mid-1990s. In 1998 he was awarded the Trinity College Distinguished Teaching Award. In an interview that shortly followed the award, he is quoted as saying, "My work moves between literature, theology, politics and history. The academic parceling up of these subjects can become an impediment to studying what I want to study, so that's the motive for interdisciplinarity. When I think about ethics, I can't help but think about politics. When I think about my Christianity, I'm also thinking about social justice. The questions I'm asking go directly across what have grown up as disciplinary boundaries within the modern academy."[4]
Sanctifying Signs: Making Christian Tradition in Late Medieval England (Notre Dame University Press, 2004)
"New Historicism and the Eucharist", Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33 (2): 241-259, 2003
"Chaucer's Tale of Melibee: Whose Virtues?" in Medieval Literature and Historical Inquiry: Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall, Ed. David Aers (Brewer, 2000)
Faith, Ethics and Church: Writing in England, 1360-1490 (Brewer, 2000)
Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics, and Gender in Late Medieval English Culture, David Aers and Lynn Staley (Penn State University Press, 1996)
Community, Gender and Individual Identity in English Writing: 1360-1430 (Routledge, 1988)