Helen Wallace - Career

Career

William Wallace had already embarked on his academic and political career and had served briefly as Lecturer in the Department of Government at the University of Manchester. Helen Wallace continued her studies at the University of Manchester (1969–73), where she completed her doctoral thesis under the title, The Domestic Policy-making Implications of the Labour Government's Application for Membership of the EEC. 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.

In 1992 she took up the first of several appointments at the University of Sussex, where she was Jean Monnet Professor of Contemporary European Studies and founding Director of the Sussex European Institute. In 1998 she became Director of the Economic and Social Research Council programme One Europe or Several? and became Co-Director of the Institute. From 2001 until 31 August 2006 she was Director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. She was Centennial Professor in the European Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science from 2007 to 2010, where she is now Emeritus Professor.

In the 1970s she was Secretary and Chair of the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES). She is now a board member for the Brussels-based think-tank, Bruegel. For Her Majesty's Government she is a member of the Better Regulation Commission and for the European Commission a member of the Group of Political Analysis and the Advisory Group for Social Sciences. She is a member of advisory boards at the University of Bremen, the University of Mannheim, the Catholic University of Leuven and the University of Vienna. She has been, since 2004, Chair of the Conseil universitaire européen pour l'Action Jean Monnet.