Dame Helen Ghosh read Modern History at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, from 1973 to 1976 and was a Senior Scholar at Hertford College, where she completed her MLitt on the cultural history of sixth-century Italy. She left Oxford to join the Civil Service, where she worked for 33 years in a variety of government departments, including the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Cabinet Office, HM Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions.

From 2005 to 2010, Helen was Permanent Secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and from 2010, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Bath in the 2008 Birthday Honours. She left the Civil Service in 2012 to become Director-general of the National Trust. In 2018 she moved to become Master of Balliol from which she stepped down in June 2026.

She is now Non-executive Chair of the Office for Environmental Protection, a Defra NDPB. Helen plays an active role in the Royal Society’s “Science in Public Life” Programme, is a Visitor of the Ashmolean Museum, and Chairs the Tablet Trust.