Every month I post links to the most recent research into motorcycle culture, subcultures, clothing and identity, along with the biggest events in the motorcycling calendar. Here’s what caught my eye this month.
Riding Stories, Building Communities: The South African Motorcycle Film Festival — Jason Wragg
Wragg, managing editor of the International Journal of Motorcycle Studies, interviews founder Werner Alberts. The festival started in the Klein Karoo town of De Rust in 2024 and judges films on emotional impact rather than production value, which opens up the question of who gets to represent motorcycling.
https://motorcyclestudies.org/volume-22-2026/riding-stories-building-communities/
Powered Two-Wheel Travel and Local Transport Planning in England — Mathew Humphrey and Vasiliki-Eleni Selechopoulou
Two University of Nottingham researchers read 127 Local Transport Plans to see how English authorities treat riders. Active travel is mentioned about 50 times more often than motorcycles, and most safety measures place the responsibility on the rider. It’s a policy paper, but a clear picture of how officialdom sees us.
https://motorcyclestudies.org/volume-22-2026/powered-two-wheel-travel-and-local-transport-planning-in-england-policy-variation-and-its-consequences-mathew-humphrey-and-vasiliki-eleni-selechopoulou/
Roads, risks and rural realities: embodied high-altitude motorcycle mobility in Ladakh — Shivam Samyal and Anil Kumar
A thematic analysis of 143 rider reviews of motorcycle tourism in Ladakh. Riders frame the trip as a test of endurance and identity rather than sightseeing, and mechanics, monks and homestay hosts act as an informal support network along the way.
https://doi.org/10.1080/15022250.2026.2757508
Strategic Homage: The Boda Boda Thieves, Film Festival Funds, and the Representation of Contemporary Uganda — Damien Pollard
The 2015 Ugandan film moves De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves from Rome to Kampala and swaps the bicycle for a boda boda motorcycle taxi. Pollard argues the homage helped it appeal to international film funds and local audiences alike, while still telling a Ugandan story of economic precarity.
https://doi.org/10.1163/26659891-bja10083
Futurism, Fascism, and Italy’s Culture of Speed — Wendy Pojmann
An essay in The Vintagent, adapted from a paper Pojmann gave at SUNY Cortland in October. She traces the motorcycle as a symbol of Italian modernity from Futurist art to the 1933 photograph of Mussolini on a Bianchi. Her argument is that Fascism inherited these meanings rather than inventing them.
https://thevintagent.com/2026/10/11/futurism-fascism-and-italys-culture-of-speed/
Common Thread: Vintage MX Tees Unraveled — Greg Adomaitis
A short history of the motocross event T-shirt, built around the Florida firm Dirt Shirts International and its hand-drawn designs. Adomaitis talks to former staff, designers and collectors about craft, cotton and why old shirts outlast new ones. Conversational rather than scholarly, but useful material culture on a garment that rarely gets written about.
https://thevintagent.com/2026/10/21/common-thread-vintage-mx-tees-unraveled/
Eternal City Moto Show 2026, Rome
The tenth edition ran at the Gazometro at the end of September, with some 30,000 visitors and more than 350 exhibitors. BikeBound’s recap concentrates on Workshop Legends, the custom area of 30 bikes selected by Andrea “Dopz” of Emporio Elaborazioni, and is mostly a photo gallery of the builds.
https://www.bikebound.com/2026/10/23/eternal-city-moto-show-2026/
That’s it for this month. If you’ve come across research I’ve missed, feel free to email me.