Gregory Anak Kiyai @ Keai grew up in a longhouse in the interior of Sarawak, an upbringing that shaped both his identity and his life's work. Watching globalization gradually reshape the social and cultural fabric of his indigenous Bornean community, he became acutely aware of how fragile oral traditions, artistic practices, and material heritage can be once they are no longer actively passed down. That awareness grew into a deep, personal conviction: that safeguarding Borneo's cultural treasures and indigenous knowledge is essential not only for preserving identity, but for ensuring these traditions survive for future generations.

This conviction carried him from the longhouse into academia, where he has spent his career trying to bridge the gap between scholarly research and the living cultural heritage of his community. He earned his Ph.D. in Arts Management from the Faculty of Applied and Creative Arts, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), with a doctoral thesis titled "Conservation of Cultural Artifacts of the Iban Community in the Sarawak Museum." The research combined ethnographic fieldwork with institutional study, examining both how the Iban community uses and understands its own cultural artifacts, and how the Sarawak Museum works to conserve them as heritage. He is currently an academic at the Visual Arts Department, Faculty of Creative Arts, Universiti Malaya, where his research continues to explore heritage conservation, material culture, and the history of art and religion among the Iban and Dayak peoples of Borneo.

Over the years, this work has produced more than 30 peer-reviewed journal articles, including publications indexed in Scopus and WoS, as well as two books: "PENGANAN" (UNIMAS Publisher) and "Artifak Material Budaya Iban di Sarawak" (Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka). His research has taken him well beyond the museum walls, into fieldwork on subjects ranging from sacred Iban artifacts and the pua kumbu textile tradition to intangible heritage and local legend. He is currently leading a new research project, "Mapping the Sungkit Weaving Patterns of the Iban Community in Batang Ai: Efforts to Inventory Intangible Cultural Heritage," funded under a BKP research grant at Universiti Malaya. Beyond publishing, he has served as a review panelist for the Sarawak Museum Journal and as academic advisor for the text panel of the ISARS 2022 exhibition organized by the Sarawak Museum Department. He has contributed to heritage initiatives including the Long Pasia Heritage Research project, the Iban Legacy project under UNIMAS's Dayak Chair Foundation, and the transformation of the old Sarawak DUN building into the Sarawak Performing Arts Center.