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.
Sturgis 85th Anniversary Rally
Black Hills, 1-10 August. The 85th edition logged 470,987 vehicles per South Dakota DOT’s official count, up about 14 percent on the previous year. Founded 1938; still the largest gathering in motorcycling.
https://sturgis.com/blogs/how-many-people-attended-the-85th-2025-sturgis-rally/
Isle of Man Classic TT
The Classic TT returned as a standalone fixture 20-29 August, with five races on Mountain Course laps run on 1990s Superbikes, two-stroke Grand Prix machines and 1960s-70s historics. The Manx Museum ran a “No Limit at 90” exhibition for the 90th anniversary of the 1935 George Formby film — a useful slice of TT folk-memory if you happen to be on the Island. Cycle News has the full race-by-race result.
https://www.cyclenews.com/2025/08/article/2025-isle-of-man-classic-tt-results/
An Autoethnography beyond Academia: The Embodiment of Motorcycle Maintenance
Helen Owton in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. An autoethnographic piece on motorcycle maintenance as embodied practice and as a way of carving an identity outside the institutional structures of academic life. Owton is at the Open University and has been working in this register for several years.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08912416251370260
Seen from a Motorcycle: Hypomnemata by Robert Pirsig’s from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Guido Borelli in the International Journal of Motorcycle Studies Vol 21. A close, slow re-reading of Pirsig that uses the act of riding as an exercise in suspending the intellect’s filters on perception. Sits well next to Owton if you’re following the phenomenological strand of motorcycle scholarship.
https://motorcyclestudies.org/volume-21-2025/seen-from-a-motorcycle-hypomnemata-by-robert-pirsigs-from-zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance/
See also Sturgis 84th in Q3 2024 and Steven Burr on the phenomenology of riding in February 2026.
That’s it for this month. If you’ve come across research I’ve missed, feel free to email me.