Privacy notice

UCL Institute of the Americas

Introduction

UCL Institute of the Americas (“we” “us”, or “our”) respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data.

Please read this Privacy Notice carefully – it describes why and how we collect and use personal data and provides information about your rights. It applies to personal data provided to us, both by individuals themselves or by third parties and supplements the following wider UCL privacy notice(s):

General privacy notice when you visit UCL’s website

Student privacy notice

Staff privacy notice

Research participants for health and care purposes privacy notice

We keep this Privacy Notice under regular review. It was last updated in August 2020.

About us

UCL Institute of the Americas is an academic department part of the Joint Faculty of Arts and Humanities & Social and Historical Sciences at University College London (UCL).

UCL, a company incorporated by Royal Charter (number RC 000631), is the entity that determines how and why your personal data is processed. This means that UCL is the ‘controller’ of your personal data for the purposes of data protection law.

Personal data that we collect about you

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

In order to keep you updated on upcoming events, news, press releases, or publications, and for educational purposes, we may collect, use and store the following kinds of personal data about you, which include:

Your name and contact details (email)

Any other details you provide us with in order to tailor our communications with you, such as any organisation you are affiliated with, your job title, your areas of interest within our research, your location (city and/or country)

Lecture/seminar video recordings and photographs

Our lawful basis for processing

Our lawful basis for processing your personal data is ‘Public Task’ and ‘Legitimate Interest’

How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

To register you as a client and to manage our relationship with you.

To help you with your enquiry. Depending on the circumstances, this may include special category personal data. Here, the processing of your information is carried out on the basis of your explicit consent

To register you on our mailing lists and keep you informed on events and activities. For clarity, no special category data or data relating to criminal convictions or offences is processed in this context.

To divulge Seminar and Lectures videos for educational purposes

Where the processing is based on your consent, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us using the details set out below. Please note that this will not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal.

We may also use anonymised data, meaning data from which you cannot be identified, for the purposes of:

Service evaluation;

Education and research; or

Fundraising and promotional purposes.

Anonymised data may also be used in published reports or journals and at conferences.

Who we share your personal data with

Your personal data will be collected and processed primarily by our staff and UCL (Access to your personal information is limited to staff who have a legitimate need to see it for the purpose of carrying out their job at UCL.). We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes outlined in section 5:

External third-party service provider: We use the following third-party service providers:

MailChimp as a marketing automation platform. MailChimp processes data in accordance with their Privacy Policy;

Eventbrite also as a marketing automation platform. Eventbrite processes data in accordance with their privacy policy as outlined here.

JotForm to collect data when you subscribe and unsubscribe to our mailing lists. JotForm processes data in accordance with their Privacy Notice.

Soundcloud as a platform to upload audio recordings of events we organise. Soundcloud processes data in accordance with their privacy policy as outlined here.

You can change your mind at any time by following the unsubscribe instructions in the footer of any email you receive from us, or by contacting us at ucl-ia@ucl.ac.uk. By the same token, you can opt out of being recorded/filmed by contacting us.

International transfers

Your data may be handled by and/or transferred to third-party providers as outlined in point 6 above:

Mailchimp, whose servers are in the United States. These are behind a ‘Privacy Shield’, more details can be found here.

Eventbrite, whose servers are also in the United States. These are behind a ‘Privacy Shield’, more details can be found here.

YouTube as a platform to upload and share videos of events we organise, staff news, degree programme and module information. This list is indicative only. YouTube processes data in accordance with Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms. Specific information about their compliance with EU regulations on data protection can be found here.

JotForm, whose servers are in the United States and Germany. Consult their privacy policy here, especially (but not only) points 5 and 6 in each category.

Soundcloud: whilst their head office is in Germany, they reserve the right to share data as appropriate to their operations with data centres located outside de EEA. Consult their EU privacy rights policy disclaimer here.

Data security

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. We have established procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

In addition, the third-party providers we employ as outlined in point 6 above have their own security measures in place in regards to stored data.

More details can be found here for Mailchimp

Eventbrite’s data security can be found here

Youtube (Google’s) data security principles can be found here

For Soundcloud’s secure handling of data please follow this link

JotForm’s data security policy is outlined here, especially (but not only) point 5 in each category.

Data retention

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. We will keep your personal data according to the Records Retention Schedule.

Your rights

Under certain circumstances, you may have the following rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data:

Right to request access to your personal data;

Right to request correction of your personal data;

Right to request erasure of your personal data;

Right to object to processing of your personal data;

Right to request restriction of the processing your personal data;

Right to request the transfer of your personal data; and

Right to withdraw consent.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details set out below.

Contacting us

You can contact UCL by telephoning +44 (0)20 7679 2000 and the UCL Institute of the Americas by writing to: ucl-ia@ucl.ac.uk

Please note that UCL has appointed a Data Protection and Freedom of Information Officer, Alex Potts. If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact our Data Protection Officer using the details set out below:

Alex Potts

Data Protection and Freedom of Information Officer

For Data Protection queries: data-protection@ucl.ac.uk

For Freedom of Information queries: foi@ucl.ac.uk

+44 (0)20 3108 7676

Complaints

If you wish to complain about our use of personal data, please send an email with the details of your complaint to data-protection@ucl.ac.uk so that we can look into the issue and respond to you.

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) (the UK data protection regulator). For further information on your rights and how to complain to the ICO, please refer to the ICO website at https://ico.org.uk.