His research explores the working-class experience and popular economic thought, particularly in rural America. He is the author of Spirit of Rebellion: Labor and Religion in the New Cotton South (2010), which won the Herbert G. Gutman Prize, the Missouri History Book Award, and the C.L.R. James Award. Roll is also a coauthor of The Gospel of the Working Class: Labor's Southern Prophets in New Deal America (2011), which received the Southern Historical Association's H.L. Mitchell Prize. His current project, "Poor Man's Fortune: A History of Working-Class White Conservatism in American Metal Mining, 1850-1950," explores the long history of white working-class anti-unionism in base metal mining.