Bangalore-based historian, Dr Vikram Sampath is the author of ten acclaimed books, including Splendours of Royal Mysore: The Untold Story of the Wodeyars, Voice of the Veena: S. Balachander, a biography, Women of the Records and Indian Classical Music and the Gramophone. His two-volume biography, Savarkar: Echoes from a Forgotten Past and Savarkar: A Contested Legacy and his latest books, Bravehearts of Bharat: Vignettes from Indian History, Waiting for Shiva: Unearthing the Truth of Kashi’s Gyan Vapi and Tipu Sultan: A Saga of Mysore’s Interregnum, have all gone on to become national bestsellers. 

In 2021, Vikram was elected a fellow of the prestigious Royal Historical Society in the U.K. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi’s first Yuva Puraskar in English literature, and the ARSC International Award for excellence in historical research in New York for his book My Name Is Gauhar Jaan: The Life and Times of a Musician. The book has even been adapted for a play, Gauhar, by Lillette Dubey. He was among four writers and artists selected as writers-in-residence at the Rashtrapati Bhawan in 2015. Vikram has a doctorate in history and music from the University of Queensland, Australia, and earlier a Masters in Mathematics and an engineering degree in Electronics from BITS Pilani and an MBA in Finance from SP Jain, Mumbai.

He was a senior research fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, a fellow of the Aspen Global Leadership Network, Eisenhower Global Fellow and a visiting fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin. Currently, he is an adjunct senior fellow at Monash University, Australia and a Distinguished Adjunct Professor at BITS Pilani. He is the Founder of the Archive of Indian Music (AIM)- India’s first online digital archive for vintage gramophone recordings and the Foundation for Indian Historical and Cultural Research (FIHCR), and has co-founded NAAV AI along with Sandeep Singh Chauhan, which translates long-form content from English to Indian languages using AI technology.