What Information Do We Collect and How Is It Used?

Introduction

Last updated: 12 February 2025

This site belongs to the Association, a professional body that publishes research, runs events, and maintains resources for its members and the wider field. The pages you are reading are public; the data we collect from them is modest, and we would rather explain it clearly than bury it in legalese.

This policy exists for one reason: so you know exactly what happens to your information when you read an article, fill in a form, or subscribe to an update. It covers the whole site under this domain. Where a specific tool or service has its own terms, we say so and point you to it.

If something here is unclear, the Contact page is the fastest way to reach us.

Purposes of Processing

We process data to keep the site working, to understand whether it works well, and to answer you when you write to us. Nothing more elaborate than that.

Maintenance comes first. Server logs tell us when a page breaks, when a link rots, or when traffic spikes in a way that threatens performance. That is unglamorous work, but it is the difference between a publication you can rely on and one that goes dark mid-week.

Performance monitoring is the second purpose. Analytics show us which resources members actually open and which sit untouched, which guides what we commission next. The third purpose is the simplest: when you send a message or sign up for an update, we use what you gave us to reply or to deliver that update.

External Services

A site of this size does not run on its own infrastructure alone. We rely on a small set of third-party providers, and each one touches a different slice of your data.

Analytics

We use a web analytics platform to measure traffic patterns and page performance. It records aggregate behaviour rather than personal profiles. We may add a second analytics tool in future; if we do, this section will name it before it goes live.

Advertising networks

The site currently shows no third-party advertising. We are evaluating ad network integration to support free access to certain resources. Should that happen, the relevant cookies and data flows will be documented here and reflected in our consent banner first.

Hosting and delivery

Pages are served through a hosting provider and a content delivery network. These services necessarily process your IP address and request metadata to deliver the page you asked for and to defend against abuse. That processing is technical and unavoidable for any site to function.

Information Collected

There are three categories, and the boundary between them matters. Two of them depend entirely on whether you choose to type something in.

Technical logs. Automatically, the site records your IP address, browser and device type, the pages you visit, and the time of each request. This is standard for nearly every website on the internet and is generated whether or not you interact with anything.

Contact submissions. When you use a contact form, we receive whatever you put in it — your name, your email, your message. We keep it only as long as needed to handle your enquiry.

Subscription inputs. If you subscribe to a newsletter or event alert, we store the email address you supplied and your subscription preferences. You can withdraw that at any time, and withdrawing it removes you from the relevant list.

Cookies and Tracking

Cookies are small files a site places on your device. We group ours by what they do, because that grouping is what your consent choices actually control.

Strictly necessary

These remember your consent decision and keep a session coherent as you move between pages. They cannot be switched off without breaking basic functionality, so they run regardless of preference.

Analytics cookies

These record visit patterns and load performance so we can see how the site behaves in the wild. They are optional. Decline them and the measurement simply does not happen for your session.

Advertising cookies

None are active today. They are reserved for the possible future ad personalisation described above, and they will only run if you opt in once that feature exists.

Data Subject Rights

You hold rights over the information we keep about you, and we would rather you used them than wondered whether you could.

• Access. You can ask what personal data we hold on you and receive a copy of it.
• Deletion. You can request that we erase your data, and we will do so unless a legal obligation requires us to keep it.
• Opt-out of tracking. You can decline analytics and advertising cookies at any point without losing access to the content.

To exercise any of these, write to us through the Contact page. We aim to respond promptly, though complex requests may take a little longer to verify properly.

Storage and Deletion

We keep data only as long as the purpose behind it lasts. Technical logs are rotated on a short cycle and then discarded. Contact submissions are retained while your enquiry is open and for a reasonable period afterward, in case you follow up. Subscription data persists until you unsubscribe.

When a deletion request reaches us, we locate the relevant records across our systems and remove them, then confirm once it is done. One honest limitation worth naming: where a third-party provider holds copies of certain technical data under its own retention rules, our deletion covers our systems and we ask the provider to follow suit, but their timelines are theirs to set.

Policy Updates

This policy changes when our practices change — a new analytics tool, the arrival of advertising, a shift in retention. When that happens, we update the date at the top of this page and, for material changes, flag it on the site so you are not left guessing.

We encourage you to revisit this page from time to time. The current version always lives at Privacy Policy.