We have received a donation of records from York University’s Prof. Wenona Giles, containing her field notes, interview transcripts, questionnaires, and other records produced and gathered during her anthropological research on Portuguese women janitorial workers in London, England, and Toronto, Canada, in the 1980s-90s. These materials supported multiple scholarly publications, including her book Portuguese Women in Toronto: Gender, Immigration, and Nationalism (University of Toronto Press, 2002). This donation was facilitated by Ilda Januário.

Dr. Giles is an anthropologist at York University with an impressive body of work on a variety of countries and themes, the most prevalent being gender, migration, ethnicity, work, nationalism, citizenship, globalization, refugees, war, and education. In the 1990s and 2000s, Giles published multiple articles, chapters, and a book – Portuguese Women in Toronto: Gender, Immigration, and Nationalism (University of Toronto Press, 2002) – about the public and private lives of Portuguese immigrant women in Canada, including janitorial workers or “cleaning ladies” in Toronto. Dr. Giles has made a very important contribution to the study of Portuguese-Canadian experiences and her work is a reference to many scholars researching this migrant/ethnic group.

Dr. Wenona Giles is a retired Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University, Officer of the Order of Canada, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She received a diploma from L’université d’Aix-Marseille in 1970 and a bachelors degree from the University of Santa Clara in 1971. She earned a degree in education from the University of British Columbia and completed her academic studies in anthropology, achieving a master’s degree in 1980 and a doctorate from the University of Toronto in 1987. Prof. Giles is an author and contributing editor of several books on gender, migration, and refugees. Her titles include: Maid in the Market: Women’s Paid Domestic Labour (Halifax: Fernwood Press, 1994); Portuguese Women in Toronto: Gender, Immigration, and Nationalism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002); and Refugees in Extended Exile: Living on the Edge (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2016). Since the late 1990s and 2000s, Giles’ research projects focused on the impact of conflict in regions such as Sri Lanka and the Balkans, the intersection between gender and forced migration, and the issue of higher education opportunities for long-term refugees and displaced people. She retired in 2018.

[Updated on October 14, 2024]