SAM DALRYMPLE is a Delhi-raised Scottish historian and award-winning filmmaker. He graduated from Oxford University as a Persian and Sanskrit scholar, and also studied at the University of Isfahan and Ferdowsi University of Mashhad in Iran. He has worked across South and Central Asia, including stints with Turquoise Mountain in Kabul, and with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture in Hunza and Lahore. 

In 2018, he co-founded Project Dastaan, a peace-building initiative that reconnects refugees displaced by the 1947 Partition of India. His debut film, Child of Empire, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2022, and received the inaugural XR History Award from the Körber-Stiftung Foundation. His animated series Lost Migrations sold out at the BFI the same year. Dastaan’s work has been exhibited at leading institutions including the Smithsonian, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Asian Art Museum, and the Partition Museum, with support from the British Council, Australia Council for the Arts, and the Ford Foundation. 

Dalrymple’s writing has appeared in the New York Times and The Spectator, and his work has been featured in TIME, The New Yorker, and The Economist. He is a columnist for Architectural Digest, and in 2025, Travel & Leisure named him ‘Champion of the Travel Narrative’. He runs the history Substack @travelsofsamwise. 

His debut book, Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia, will be published by William Collins in June 2025.