Odin's Eye Blog

The University of the Highlands and Islands Institute for Northern Studies, together with our collaborative partners from the National Library of Scotland and Landscape Research Group, held the first in a series of three Mapping Identities workshops on Friday 25th April 2025.

This project, funded through the generous support of an RSE Research Collaboration Grant, brings together scholars from a wide range of disciplines to explore the ways in which maps have been, and still are, used to interpret and shape Scotland’s understanding of the present, past and future.

Though the purpose of a map may superficially be merely functional, educational or descriptive, the very act of its production will have necessitated some level of selectivity. Such selectivity can include the features presented, the scale used, where the map is centred, the annotations used and where boundaries and borders are placed. 

This project asks why and how such choices are made and how these choices have impacted the way that geography, cosmology, history, geology and identity has been perceived in Scotland. Our aim is to encourage awareness of the work being undertaken on these themes and foster new collaborations.

The workshop entitled Identity, held at the National Library of Scotland, examined how maps have influenced and been influenced by various identities. It featured presentations from a diverse group of researchers, along with a display of some of the most intriguing maps from the National Library of Scotland’s collection.

1. Kelly Morrison – Mapping Coastal Identities: Community Narratives & Digital Cartography
2. Liz Carter – Conflict Collections: WW2 Maps on Display in Highland Museums
3. Gerry McKeever – Literary Maps of Scotland: A Brief History
4. Juliette Desportes – The Irony of Estate Mapping? Authority and Identity in Eighteenth Century Highland Maps
5. Charlotte McLean – Another Way of Seeing. Scottish Landscape Architecture & the work of Mark Turnbull
6. Shane McLeod – Mapping Medieval Identities: Norse, Gaels and Medieval Beacons
7. Chris Fleet – Maps and National Identity in a Digital Age
8. Showcase session of highlights from the NLS maps collection
9. Meleanie Mainwaring-McKay – Maps in Context: Highland Identity in the Fraser- Mackintosh Collections
10. Anna Groundwater – Materialising Identities in the Scottish National Collections

The second workshop entitled Mapping Identities: Geography and Cosmology will be held on Friday June 6th 2025 at UHI Orkney. The third Workshop Mapping Identities: Power will be held at the Mitchell Library, Glasgow on 8th October 2025. A final conference is planned for 9th February 2026 and will be held at UHI Perth. There will be more information on the conference as we approach the date.

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The Mapping Identities Project is funded through the RSE Research Collaboration Grant.