A bright student, Sansom studied the English Tripos at Jesus College, Cambridge, graduating with a first-class degree in 1994.
[1][2] Involved in student theatre, his contemporaries included Rupert Goold, David Mitchell, Robert Webb, Sacha Baron Cohen and Olivia Colman, who was his flatmate.
[1] In 2019, it was announced that Sansom would take over in June of that year from Conrad Nelson as Artistic Director of the theatre company Northern Broadsides.
[10] Achievements during Sansom's tenure included the company winning the inaugural The Stage award for regional theatre of the year in 2010.
[12] Sansom's productions of the rarely performed early plays Spring Storm by Tennessee Williams, and Beyond the Horizon by Eugene O'Neill, won him the 2010 TMA Award for Best Director and transferred to the UK's National Theatre.