This privacy policy sets out how the School of Advanced Study (the 'School') uses and protects any information that you provide to us when you use this website.

Privacy statement

When you supply any personal information to the School of Advanced Study, University of London, we have legal obligations towards you in the way we deal with that data. We must collect the information fairly -- that is, we must explain how we will use it and tell you if we want to pass the information on to anyone else. In general, any information you provide to the School will only be used within the School and by its service providers. It will never be supplied to anyone outside the School without first obtaining your consent, unless we are obliged or permitted by law to disclose it. This applies to your name, email address(es), personal information, and any email correspondence. Also, if you post or send offensive or inappropriate content anywhere on the site or to the School, or otherwise engage in any disruptive behaviour on the site, and the School considers such behaviour to be serious and/or repeated, the School can use whatever information is available to it about you to stop such behaviour. This may include informing relevant third parties such as your employer, college, or email provider about the content and your behaviour.

We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as you use the service you have requested, and remove it in the event that the purpose has been met. Where personal information is held for people who are not yet registered but have taken part in other services (for example, competitions), that information will be held only as long as necessary to ensure that the service is run smoothly. We will ensure that all personal information supplied is held securely in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998.

If you are notified on the School's website that your information may be used to allow the School to contact you, this means that the School may contact you for a number of purposes related to the service you have signed up for. For example, we may wish to provide you with password reminders or notify you that the particular service has been suspended for maintenance. We will not contact you for promotional purposes, such as notifying you of improvements to the service or new services on the School's website unless you specifically agree to be contacted for such purposes at the time you submit your information on the website, or at a later time if you sign up specifically to receive such information.

The School of Advanced Study is part of the University of London, which is a registered data controller. The University's data protection policy is available at the following link: https://london.ac.uk/about-us/how-university-run/policies/privacy-policy-and-cookies

Cookies

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files used by a website to 'request' information from your computer or mobile device browser, to return this information to the website, and then to store the information. Cookies can be requested by any website and are placed on your device’s hard drive. Cookies allow the web application to tailor its operations to your needs, likes, and dislikes by gathering and remembering information about your preferences.

You can control cookies through your browser settings. Find out more about cookies and how to manage them on the Directgov website. 

How we use cookies

We only collect personally non-identifiable information for reporting and analysis purposes from two sources:

Google Analytics: we use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc., to collect information in an anonymous form on how visitors use our site. You can opt out from being tracked by Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

YouTube: we embed videos from YouTube using YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode. This mode may set cookies on your computer once you click on the YouTube video player, but YouTube will not store personally identifiable cookie information for playbacks of embedded videos using the privacy-enhanced mode. To learn more, please visit YouTube’s embedding videos information page .

We may collect the following information using Google Analytics or YouTube:

  • number of visitors, including unique visitors to the site
  • number of page views
  • time spent viewing pages
  • types of browsers used to view the site
  • number of video downloads
  • age, gender, and location of people viewing our videos

We collect and analyse this information to understand your needs and to provide you with a better service by making improvements to our website. We also use these statistics in reporting on our activities to our funder, the Higher Education Funding Council for England. We will not disclose this information to third parties except as specified above.

We also use Hotjar, an analytics and feedback tool which helps us to improve the usability of our site. Hotjar sets persistent cookies (up to 365 days) for analytics purposes and to display the correct content to our visitors. You can read about what cookies are stored by visiting Hotjar's website. Hotjar also records visitor information including mouse clicks and movements, scrolling activity and user input on our website (for example on the search box) – this information is anonymous. Recordings are automatically deleted after 365 days. You can opt out of Hotjar collecting your information at any time by following these instructions.

Advertising cookies

We use cookies to deliver targeted advertising based on your use of our site and to measure the performance of our advertising. Advertising technologies which may set cookies on this site include (but are not limited to) AdWords, DoubleClick, and social media platforms (including Facebook, Twitter, and others).

Opting out of cookies

Information about this and your options for opting out of advertising cookies is available from the Network Advertising Initiative. Alternatively, consult the documentation for your web browser or mobile device for further options to control which cookies you allow. You can disable Google Analytics tracking on your browser by following the instructions on the Google site.

Links to other websites

Our website may contain links to other websites. Please remember that once you have followed these links to leave our site our privacy policy no longer applies. By continuing your navigation of this site, you are consenting to the School of Advanced Study collecting and using your information for the purposes stated above.