Bob Bolin’s work explores the political ecology of technological hazards and questions of social vulnerability and environmental justice. His research approach combines hazards geography, Marxist political ecology, and environmental justice to study a broad suite of environmental inequalities. 

Much of his earlier research focused on environmental disasters using vulnerability theory and environmental justice to examine long term disaster recovery and the effects of social inequalities on vulnerability. More recent work focuses on technological hazards, industrial emissions and the unequal toxic exposures of poor people and racial minorities. Other related work has focused on climate change, social vulnerability, and water resources in the urban Southwest. Most recently his research has examined the environmental and health implications of nuclear technologies, and nuclear weapons manucfacturing and testing in the American West.

Bolin was the founding director of the doctoral program in Environmental Social Science and continues to teach core graduate courses in that interdisciplinary environmental studies program in School of Human Evolution and Social Change.