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Privacy policy

www.rsc.ox.ac.uk ('our website') is operated by the Refugee Studies Centre, which is part of the University of Oxford.

We are committed to respecting and protecting the privacy and security of your personal information ('personal data').

Purpose of the policy

This privacy policy describes how we collect and use your personal data in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

We may update this policy at any time. Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.

It is important that you read this policy, together with any other privacy policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using your personal data.

Information about how we use your data if you are a student is covered in a separate policy which will be available on the University website.

Glossary

Where we refer in this policy to your ‘personal data’, we mean any recorded information that is about you and from which you can be identified. It does not include data where your identity has been removed (anonymous data).

Where we refer to the ‘processing’ of your personal data, we mean anything that we do with that information, including collection, use, storage, disclosure, retention or deletion.

Who is using your data?

The University of Oxford (the University’s legal title is the Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford) is the "data controller" for the information that you provide to us when visiting our website. This means that we decide how to use it and are responsible for looking after it in accordance with the GDPR. We also share your data with third parties, details of which are provided below.

Access to your personal data within the University will be provided to those staff who need to view it as part of their work in connection with the operation of this website. It will also be shared with the third parties described below.

Types of data we collect about you

We will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal data when you use our site:

Data you give us

You may give us data about you including:

  • Your name and title
  • Your date of birth
  • Your address, including city and country of residence
  • Your email address
  • A contact telephone number
  • Your academic record
  • Your work experience history and details of referees
  • Your job title
  • Where you currently work
  • Your CV
  • Passport details

Data we collect about you (If you consent to our use of cookies)

  • If you visit our website, we will automatically collect certain technical information, for example, the type of device (and its unique device identifier) you use to access our site, the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your device to the Internet, browser type and version, time zone setting, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system, mobile network information and platform.
  • We will automatically collect information about your visit to our site including the full Uniform Resource Locators (URL), clickstream to, through and from the Website (including date and time), pages you viewed, page response times, download errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction information (such as scrolling, clicks, and mouse-overs), and methods used to browse away from the page.

When do we collect personal data?

We will collect the vast majority of data about you when you consent to email communications via our webforms, commence an application via our online application platforms or when you contact us or report a problem to us, or complete a survey that we use for research purposes.

When you visit our site we may also automatically collect technical information about your visit from your computer.

How do we use your data?

We process your data for one or more of the following reasons:

  • To provide you with the services or information you have requested, such as about courses that you have applied for or events you wish to attend, and for customer administration. This processing is necessary to meet our contractual obligations to you or to take steps requested by you prior to entering into a contract.
  • To provide you with marketing communications where we have your consent, such as on courses, seminars or newsletter in which you may be interested. We do this only where you have specifically indicated that you consent to receive such communications, for example, by ticking a box or through some other action, or by volunteering non-mandatory information. You can withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us at rsc@qeh.ox.ac.uk. In this event, we will stop any processing as soon as we can. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before your withdrawal of consent.
  • To process your short course/study programme application.
  • For purposes arising from your use of this website, for example, to ensure that we understand how this site is used. This processing occurs because it is necessary to meet our legitimate interests in operating this website.

Change of Purpose

We will only process your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another related reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your data for an unrelated purpose, we will seek your consent to use it for that new purpose. Please note that there may be occasions where we may process your data without your knowledge or consent where this is required or permitted by law.

Sharing your data with third parties

We may share your data with third parties who provide services on our behalf, such as for administrative purposes.  All our third-party service providers (for example, Adestra and Eventbrite) are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your data.

Adestra (a subsidiary of Upland, Privacy Policy) and Eventbrite participate in and have certified their compliance with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework and the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, and the EU approved Standard Contractual Clauses. They are committed to subjecting all personal data received from European Union (EU) member countries and Switzerland, respectively, in reliance on each Privacy Shield Framework, to the Framework’s applicable Principles. To learn more about the Privacy Shield Framework, and to view certifications, visit the U.S. Department of Commerce at https://www.privacyshield.gov/list.  

We may also share your personal data with third parties if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our site terms of use or to protect the rights, property or safety of our site, our users, and others.

Where your data is shared with third parties, we will seek to share the minimum amount necessary.

Where we store or use your data

We may store data collected by the website manually or electronically. The data is stored on our secure servers and/or in our premises within the UK.

There may be occasions when we transfer your data outside the European Economic Area (EEA), for example, when we communicate with you using a cloud-based service provider that operates outside the EEA such as Eventbrite (see above). Such transfers will only take place if one of the following applies:

  • the country receiving the data is considered by the EU to provide an adequate level of data protection;
  • the organisation receiving the data is covered by an arrangement recognised by the EU as providing an adequate standard of data protection, e.g. transfers to companies that are certified under the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield with the approved Standard Contractual Clauses;
  • the transfer is governed by approved contractual clauses;
  • the transfer has your consent;
  • the transfer is necessary for the performance of a contract with you or to take steps requested by you prior to entering into that contract; or
  • the transfer is necessary for the performance of a contract with another person, which is in your interests.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your personal data, we cannot guarantee the security of data transmitted to the website and any transmission is at your own risk.

Third party websites

Our website contains links to and from various third party websites. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Retaining your personal data

We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

Your rights

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

  • Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a 'data subject access request'). This enables you to receive a copy of your data and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
  • Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
  • Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove your data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your data where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
  • Object to processing of your personal information where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
  • Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of your data, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
  • Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

Depending on the circumstances and the nature of your request it may not be possible for us to do what you have asked, for example, where there is a statutory or contractual requirement for us to process your data and it would not be possible to fulfil our legal obligations if we were to stop. However, where you have consented to the processing (for example where you have asked us to contact you for marketing purposes) you can withdraw your consent at any time by emailing us at rsc@qeh.ox.ac.uk. In this event, we will stop the processing as soon as we can. However, this will not affect the lawfulness of any processing carried out before your withdrawal of consent and you may no longer be able to use the site in the same way as you did before.

If you want to exercise any of the rights described above or are dissatisfied with the way we have used your information, you should contact the University’s Information Compliance Team at data.protection@admin.ox.ac.uk. The same email address may be used to contact the University’s Data Protection Officer. We will seek to deal with your request without undue delay, and in any event in accordance with the requirements of the GDPR. Please note that we may keep a record of your communications to help us resolve any issues which you raise.

If you remain dissatisfied, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/concerns.

Cookies

This website uses a limited number of cookies to manage the performance and design of the site, and for basic analysis of its usage. In particular, we use Google Analytics cookies. By using our website, you agree that we can place these types of cookies on your device.

Read an overview of privacy at Google

You can customise how your data is stored by Google Analytics using their Opt-out browser add-on.

If you are a visitor to the site, you may find that embedded content (eg from YouTube, Google maps etc) will place cookies on your computer. More information about these Third Party cookies can be found in the University's Cookie Statement.

For more information about cookies visit allaboutcookies.org or aboutcookies.org or visit the following sites for information about how to control and delete cookies.

Changes to this policy

Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page. Please check back to see any updates or changes to our privacy policy.

Contact

If you wish to raise any queries or concerns about this privacy policy please contact us by email at rsc@qeh.ox.ac.uk or in writing to:

Communications Officer
Refugee Studies Centre
Oxford Department of International Development
3 Mansfield Road
Oxford
OX1 3TB