Sam van Schaik is an English Tibetologist. He obtained a PhD in Tibetan Buddhist literature at the University of Manchester in 2000, with a dissertation on the translations of Dzogchen texts by Jigme Lingpa. Since 1999 he has worked at the British Library in London, and is currently a project manager for the International Dunhuang Project, specialising in the study of Tibetan Buddhist manuscripts from Dunhuang. He has also taught occasional courses at SOAS, University of London.

In this podcast we discuss his new book Buddhist Magic a translation of spells from a Tibetan monk-magician of 10th century whose manuscript was part of the collection at Dunhuang.