Dame Helen Sarah Wallace, Lady Wallace of Saltaire, DBE, CMG, FBA, MAE, FAcSS (born 25 June 1946 in Whalley Range, Manchester), née Rushworth, is a British expert in European studies and, by marriage to William Wallace, Baron Wallace of Saltaire, a peeress. She was Foreign Secretary of the British Academy from 2011 to 2015.
She attended Oxford University (1963–67), where she was President of the Oxford University Liberal Club and where she obtained a BA in Classics. Having already met her future husband, William Wallace, at Oxford, she spent a year at Bruges, Belgium, undertaking postgraduate studies at the College of Europe (1967–68).
Helen Rushworth married William Wallace on 25 August 1968; the couple have two children, Harriet (born 1977) and Edward (born 1981).
Helen Wallace studied at the University of Manchester (1969–73), where she completed her doctoral thesis with the title The Domestic Policy-making Implications of the Labour Government's Application for Membership of the EEC (1975). She obtained a Certificate of Advanced European Studies at the College of Europe in 1968.
She was Lecturer in European Studies at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) 1974–78 and in 1976 was appointed Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, a position she continued to hold until 2001. She was a Lecturer at the Civil Service College 1978–85, and, briefly, a member of the planning staff at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office 1979–80. In 1985, she was appointed Senior Research Fellow and Director of the West-European Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House.