Although she was born in Iran, Giles holds both UK and Canadian citizenship. After earning her Bachelor of Arts at Santa Clara University in 1971, Giles earned her Master's degree and PhD in Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Her dissertation was titled "Motherhood and Wage Labour in London: Portuguese Migrant Women and the Politics of Gender."
Career
After moving to York University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada as a professor, Giles began working in York's Centre for Refugee Studies and Anthropology Department. In 1993, Giles coordinated the Women in Conflict Zones Research Network with the Centre for Refugee Studies and subsequently published "Maid in the Market: Women's Paid Domestic Labour" the following year. She worked as coordinator of the Women in Conflict Zones Research Network until 2004. That same year, she published a book titled "Sites of Violence: Gender and Conflict Zones." The book is composed of essays using a feminist lens to understand how conflict and war were gendered and racialized. From 2005 to 2008, Giles was a principal investigator for a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council funded project titled "The Globalization of Homelessness in Long-Term Refugee Camps." She then began a six-year investigation into "'A Canadian Refugee Research Network: Globalizing Knowledge." Giles and fellow York professor Jennifer Hyndman began a project titled "The Globalization of Protracted Refugee Situations" initiative. The goal of this initiative was to help ease those in long-term refugee situations. After consulting the results of the GPRS, Giles began constructing the Borderless Higher Education for Refugees project with Don Dippo in 2013 through the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University, and in partnership with Kenyatta and Moi universities and the University of British Columbia. In February 2013, the Canadian International Development Agency, now Global Affairs Canada, granted them more than $4.5 million over a five year period to help launch BHER. The following month, Giles was recognized by York University as a research leader at the 2013 Research Gala. In 2015, with the assistance of Don Dippo and York's Centre for Refugee Studies, Giles co-led the Borderless Higher Education for Refugees project which offered on-line and on-site university degrees, diplomas and certificates to refugees in the Dadaab refugee camps. In 2016, Giles co-authored a book with Jennifer Hyndman titled "Refugees in Extended Exile: Living on the Edge." The book was critical of contemporary humanitarian aid efforts and the vulnerable status of refugees. Besides refugees, Giles has also focused her research on the lives of Canadian Portuguese women. In 2017, she donated her research conducted in the 1980s to the Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections at the York University Libraries. Giles retired from York University in October 2018, and is now a Professor Emerita and Senior Scholar at York University and Resident Researcher at the Centre for Refugee Studies. A month after her retirement, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her most recent book, co-edited with Jacqueline Bhabha and Faraaz Mahomed is: ''A Better Future: The Role of Higher Education for Displaced and Marginalised People https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/better-future/BFC8AAABEDFB41F88AE0929891CFE5DD
