Figure 2 Screengrab of the Wikidata-driven map of accused witches in Scotland. University of Edinburgh, CC-BY-SA Available at: witches.is.ed.ac.uk.
At project completion, the places of residence for 3,141 men and women accused of witchcraft in Scotland (85 percent of them women) were geolocated on a Wikidata-driven map website so that anyone in Scotland can find out about the accusations of witchcraft that happened near them. The map succeeds in highlighting the sheer scale and intensity of the Scottish witch hunts to a modern audience, as well as in localizing and humanizing the individual stories of the women who were persecuted. Additionally, “Women in Red” editors at the University created pages for over twenty notable women accused of witchcraft in Scotland. One of which includes Lilias Adie, the only accused witch in Scotland for whom we can put a face to, thanks to forensic artists at the University of Dundee digitally reconstructing her face and then sharing this image to her newly created Wikipedia page (Younger, 2017).
Since the map website launched in September 2019, this project has gained worldwide media coverage, stimulating interest in these stories and Emma has since presented on her work at the second “Remembering Scotland’s Accused Witches Conference” in November 2020. The conference is part of growing grassroots movement to memorialize what happened to these women and the Wikidata map is viewed as an important resource in furthering this aim and for uncovering more of these women’s stories.
