Introduction: setting the scene for Critical Cycling Studies
Cycles, ubiquitous around the globe, are versatile and adaptable instruments used across extremely diverse demographics, in many different contexts, for manifold purposes, and with wide-ranging effects on those who use them and those around them (e.g., Buehler and Goel, 2022; Goel et al., 2021; Sener et al., 2009). Cycles also structure diverse phenomenologies and epistemologies: being a cycle user, and even being around cycle users, shapes one's consciousness, thoughts, and moods. As such, cycles -- and the underlying practices and experiences of cycling -- represent important and fascinating opportunities for research. They function as interfaces that afford diverse and multimodal ways of being in, interacting with, thinking about, and acting upon ecological, social, political, economic, technical, and cultural environments. To a degree, scholars are already studying cycles and cycling in these terms. For instance, in the domain of sports science and cycle safety, researchers have proposed micro-gestural human-cycle interfaces for professional road cycling (Caon et al., 2020); in the technical sciences and mobility studies, new types of digital interfaces have been proposed to increase cycle safety by facilitating interaction between riders and autonomous vehicles (e.g., Lindner et al., 2024; Berge, 2024); and, in a more philosophical vein, urban cycling has been explored as a form of perceptual engagement that is powerfully shaped by different types of interfaces (Strehovec, 2010). We build on these perspectives in this essay, arguing for a fuller reconceptualisation of cycles as physical interfaces and of the experience of cycling itself as a complex figurative "interface technology," a form of situated knowledge rooted in practice that mediates between cyclists, non-cyclists, and the ecological, social, political, and cultural environments in which cycling occurs, and which consequently shapes the bodily, sensory, cognitive, and emotional states of cyclists. Such a reconceptualisation can help us to rethink the critical frameworks we bring to cycling-related research, pushing beyond applied research and cross-disciplinary investigations that instrumentalise methodologies and epistemologies which are already closely aligned (Kluger and Bartzke, 2020) and allowing us to realise opportunities for new kinds of interdisciplinary enquiry.
In this essay, we outline our vision for interdisciplinary cycling-related research, which we call "Critical Cycling Studies" (CCS). This approach not only bridges adjacent disciplines, but also emphasises, wherever relevant, pluralistic perspectives stemming from non-cognate disciplinary contexts, in order to frame research questions in new, broader, and more self-critical ways. In particular, we argue that humanities-informed perspectives are ideally suited to developing frameworks for exploratory, generative, and potentially transformative interdisciplinary cycling scholarship. Humanities scholarship frequently takes up concerns (e.g., the rhetorical, social, political, historical, philosophical, and aesthetic) that simultaneously fall under the purview of multiple established disciplines and methodological frameworks, and has developed effective and powerful approaches to combining them (Robinson et al., 2016). In this regard, the humanities can serve both to unify and deterritorialise critical points of view in cycling-related research while also providing researchers with the critical self-reflection needed to challenge the assumptions encoded in existing disciplinary orientations (Harpham, 2013).
The following sections elaborate the opportunities afforded cycling researchers by an interdisciplinary, humanities-informed CCS. Section 2 unpacks critical considerations related to the core focus of CCS and proposes that, in addition to attending to "cycles" as physical objects, researchers should also critically engage with cycling itself as an interface technology that mediates between cyclists and the various environments with which they interact. Following this broader reorientation, and in an attempt to transcend the constraints of individual academic disciplines and integrate multiple perspectives into research on complex issues tied to cycling, Section 3 positions CCS as fundamentally interdisciplinary. We parse the generative contributions that various humanities-informed approaches can make to existing perspectives in cycling scholarship and enumerate some of the opportunities -- as well as productive risks and challenges -- of interdisciplinary enquiry. Section 4 sketches potential future steps towards the formation and consolidation of CCS as a research framework, and Section 5 summarises our key findings and arguments.
The goal of CCS is to foster critical dialogue across research domains while promoting an interdisciplinary and humanities-informed approach to cycling research. In doing so, we recognise that our own epistemologies and standpoints have been shaped by our disciplinary training and personal experiences. As middle-aged, cis-gendered white men from Western Europe and North America, long-time cyclists, and humanities professors conducting interdisciplinary scholarship, we acknowledge that our perspectives on cycling extend from (and are limited by) specific cultural, social, and economic contexts. How someone uses (or does not use) a cycle, and how they think about cycling, will always be contingent on the complex interplay of many factors that frame their personal and professional lives. We believe that this great diversity of contexts and points of view represents a unique opportunity for the boundary-pushing and critically reflexive research that CCS hopes to realise. As we discuss below, cycling is a situated and dynamic critical practice, a multimodal way of being that shapes how cyclists relate to the world and how the world, in turn, can be shaped by them. Such a perspective, we argue, can provide the foundation for more pluralistic and holistic approaches to cycling scholarship.
This does not mean that all cycling researchers need to be cyclists. In fact, many important CCS insights regarding the cultural, social, socio-economic, and political valences of cycling should come from non-cyclist perspectives, including from those who may face structural barriers to cycling, such as economic constraints, health issues, gendered harassment, or hostile infrastructure, and perhaps even from those who dislike or are indifferent to cycling but who nevertheless indirectly share in the experience of cycling in their daily lives as, for instance, pedestrians or automobile users (e.g., Bernstein, 2016). All of those perspectives matter and harbour potentially transformative opportunities for truly interdisciplinary work.
Our own positionality is also important to attend to because cycling research frequently reflects WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) biases (see Apicella et al., 2020; Allen, 2021; Castañeda, 2021). CCS must actively develop perspectives that challenge and overcome such biases and the inequitable distribution of power both in cycling studies and in cycling more generally. This requires a commitment to adopting intersectional perspectives. Intersectionality, as coined by the critical race theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw, generally refers to how social categories, including race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability, can intersect to create complex systems of disadvantage or privilege (Collins and Bilge, 2020). In relation to cycling, an intersectional perspective can, for example, reveal power dynamics and systemic and structural inequalities that produce uneven urban cycling experiences (Lam, 2020); such intersectional perspectives can then be integrated into cycling policies and projects to increase equity and inclusion around, for instance, gender and class (Lam, 2022). By extension, it is also important to adopt decolonial perspectives (e.g., Nachman et al., 2023) and to engage with the knowledge traditions of Indigenous communities (e.g., Dyer-Redner, 2017) and concerns emerging from other regions. The Global South (e.g., Verstappen, 2023) is one illustrative example among many, but CCS must also champion scholarship from other non-Western contexts, including East Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Specific examples for contexts out of which critical perspectives could emerge include Japan's integration of cycling and transit policy (e.g., Belliard et al., 2025; Lagadic, 2022), China's extensive bike-sharing ecosystems (e.g., Tao and Zhou, 2021), cycling infrastructure transformations in Eastern Europe (e.g., Šobot et al., 2024), and gendered cycling practices in Middle Eastern countries (e.g., Raab, 2022). CCS should also draw inspiration from such progressive research domains as disability studies (e.g., Clayton, Parkin, and Billington, 2017) and feminist geography (e.g., Ravensbergen, Buliung, and Laliberté, 2019).
Finally, we do not seek to define CCS exhaustively or conclusively. Instead, as we elaborate in Section 4, CCS should be seen as an adaptable and evolving framework. In describing the ways in which CCS could be defined, we also outline opportunities for others to contribute to the co-creation and evolution of a critical framework that is dynamic and open to expansion, revision, and reshaping by all those who wish to engage with it. What follows, therefore, is offered not as a definitive set of ideas but as critical reflection on a point of departure for boundary-pushing, interdisciplinary cycling scholarship.