Muhammed Asif Kalliyath is a first-generation scholar from India and a PhD student in the Department of Art History at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His doctoral research examines how British colonial art and textual narratives shaped the environmental, spatial, and cultural transformations of the Western Ghats in India. He holds a Master’s degree in History from the University of Hyderabad and an M.Phil. in History from the University of Delhi, completed with the support of a Junior Research Fellowship. His M.Phil. thesis focused on British colonial environmental interventions in Wayanad. Asif’s research is deeply informed by both his lived experience and his academic engagement with the region.