Allan Langdale grew up on Vancouver Island wondering what the rest of the world was like and has spent much of his adult life finding out. Allan is an art and architectural historian, photographer, filmmaker, and travel writer who received his Ph.D. in art history from UC Santa Barbara. He has taught courses in Italian Renaissance art, Greek, Roman, Byzantine (including Georgian and Armenian architecture), and Indian and Islamic art and architecture. He currently teaches art history at UC Santa Cruz as a lecturer.

Along with several articles, Allan wrote the definitive architectural field guide to the little-known region of Turkish Cyprus, In a Contested Realm (2012) and also made the award-winning documentary film The Stones of Famagusta: the Story of a Forgotten City (2008). His travel books include Palermo: Travels in the City of Happiness (2015) and The Hippodrome of Istanbul / Constantinople: An Illustrated Handbook of its History (2019).

A popular Smithsonian Expert, Allan has traveled extensively in the eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea region, the Middle East—including Jordan and Egypt—and India.