Wenona Mary Giles OC FRSC is a professor emerita in the Department of Anthropology at York University.
[4] In 1993, she began to coordinate the international Women in Conflict Zones Research Network based at the Centre for Refugee Studies.
[6] From 2005 to 2008, Giles was the principal investigator for a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funded project titled "The Globalization of Homelessness in Long-Term Refugee Camps."
[9] In February 2013, the Canadian International Development Agency granted them more than $4.5 million over a five-year period to help launch BHER.
In October 2015, 59 people in a Dadaab refugee camp began to earn certificates, diplomas and degrees from Moi and Kenyatta universities in Kenya and York and UBC in Canada.