This born-digital archive records a collection of letters, textiles, jewelry, paintings and other items connected to the life of Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa Ducarel (1758-1822), a Mughal woman who was born in the South Asian subcontinent and relocated to Devonshire, England to live with the English man who would become her husband and their children. This archive includes five curated exhibits, an interactive timeline shedding more light on the life and times of Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa and her family, a reader’s guide for the collection, and teaching resources. You can also browse the collection using media descriptors and keywords.
The archive also will be ingested into the University of Pennsylvania’s OPenn archive. The imaging and digitization of Elizabeth Sharaf un-Nisa’s materials has been made possible by the Palmer Family’s loan of their ancestor’s archival materials, and grants from the John Fell Fund at the University of Oxford, the Penn Price Lab, and from the Trustees' Council for Penn Women.
This project has also benefited from the generous support of:
Penn Undergraduate Research Mentoring (PURM) Program
The Price Lab for Digital Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania
The University of Oxford John Fell Fund
Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB)
Department of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania
This project has benefited from the hard work of the following staff members:
Max Johnson Dugan, Lead Designer and DH Specialist
Seyed Ali Noori, Lead Persian Translator and DH Specialist
Hallie Nell Swanson, Persian Translator and Archival Researcher
Munazza Ebtikar, Archival Researcher
This project has benefited from the hard work of the following undergraduate research assistants:
Michael Goerlitz
Siddharth Kanderi
Emma Kaneira
Juliana Lu
Fisher Taylor