Dame Helen Ghosh

Dame Helen Ghosh read Modern History at St Hugh’s College and went on to complete an MLitt in Medieval Italian History at Hertford College. 

Helen worked in the civil service for more than 30 years, including time in the Department for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Cabinet Office, HM Revenue and Customs, and the Department for Work and Pensions.  

From 2005-2010, she was Permanent Secretary at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and from 2010, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. While working as a civil servant, she was particularly interested in social exclusion and urban regeneration policies, and in a variety of local and global environmental issues.  

Leaving the Civil Service in 2012, she became Director General of the National Trust, and in 2018 took up her role as Master of Balliol. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Bath in 2008. 

She is a Visitor of the Ashmolean Museum, Chair of the Curators of the University Parks, and a Trustee of the Oxford Preservation Trust and the Blackfriars Overseas Aid Trust, among other organisations. 

Helen has been resident in Oxford since she was a student, and has been active in many local community groups, including as a primary school Governor and a PTA Chair at her children’s schools.  Her husband is a Fellow of St Anne’s College and has two grown up children.