As part of the Penn Undergraduate Mentorship Research project, Jasleen Sidhu and Rodin Bantawa worked as research assistants for the “Unstable Archives Project”. This project contributes to Professor Megan Robb’s forthcoming book on Elizabeth Sharaf un Nisa Ducarel, expanding on her 2023 American Historical Review article, “Becoming Elizabeth: The Transformation of a Bihari Mughal into an English Lady”. Our research supports the development of the “Unstable Archives” project, bringing together digitized letters, portraits, and material objects to tell Sharaf un-Nisa’s story. The work emphasizes microhistory as a method: using one woman’s life to reveal broader questions about gender, empire, and identity in the late eighteenth century.