The Memory Studies Association (MSA) is a Non Profit Organisation (Vereniging met volledige rechtsbevoegdheid) KvK Number 69036691 registered at Onderstebosch 3, 6228SC Maastricht, The Netherlands.

The MSA, including its Working Groups and Regional Networks, recognises the importance of protecting the personal information collected from users in the operation of its services and takes reasonable steps to maintain the security, integrity and privacy of any information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. By submitting your information to the MSA you consent to the practices described in this policy.

This Privacy Policy describes how the MSA collects and uses the personal information you provide. It also describes the choices available to you regarding our use of your personal information and how you can access and update this information.

The MSA can be contacted at info@memorystudiesassociation.org.

1. How we collect information

The MSA collects personal information from you in the following ways:

• Directly from your written input through both interaction with MSA members of staff, the website (such as the MSA members’ pages and event registration areas of the website) or event Apps;
• Automatically through the MSA’s website technologies including tracking online, such as by web cookies (which are small text files created by websites that are stored on your computer); directly from your written input through interaction with a third-party peer review system used by an MSA journal

We do not buy, collect, store, sell or process any data originating from any third parties except where data may originate from a University hosting one of our events.

2. Information you provide

The types of personal information the MSA collects from you directly may include:

• Contact details, including your name, email address, postal address, website and telephone number;
• Institutional affiliation and identification;
• Gender;
• Position within your university/stage of career, including PhD start and completion dates;
• Research interests;
• Usernames and passwords;
• Profile photo;
• Website security roles to allow you to securely perform some limited functions within the MSA website;
• History of applications to and participation in MSA events and activities (including Section, Workshop, Panel and Paper proposals, applications for funding, shortlisting for prizes and article submissions);
• Membership of MSA Working Groups and Regional Networks;
• Tracking codes, such as cookies;
• Payment information, such as bank details;
• Comments, feedback, posts and other content you provide to the MSA (including through the MSA website);
• Consent to receive emails from subscription lists;
• Internet Protocol (IP) addresses used to connect your computer to the Internet;
• MSA Members’ account creation and last log-in date and time;
• Logging acceptance of the Privacy Policy and other Terms and Conditions;
• Location-aware services, the physical location of your device in order to provide you with more relevant content for your location (e.g. for an event App).

You are under no statutory or contractual requirement or obligation to provide us with your personal information; however, we require certain information above in order for us to deal with you as a service user in an efficient and effective manner.

The legal basis for processing your data is based on your specific consent/performance of a contract/compliance with a legal obligation/our legitimate interest that we will have requested/stated in accordance with this policy, therefore we will not store, process or transfer your data outside the parties detailed above unless we have an appropriate lawful reason to do so.

3. Other information we collect

3.1 Photography at MSA events

The MSA employs a professional photographer at many of its events. Photographs are taken during the plenary sessions, panel/teaching rooms and in public areas. Participants are informed in advance of, and during the event of when and where photography will take place and are given opportunities and methods to either avoid being photographed or to have any images taken deleted on the spot or at a later date. Photographs are used as a historical record of the event and in marketing collateral; no other personally identifiable information is provided alongside any photographs of individuals unless the MSA has explicit consent.

3.2 Filming at MSA events

The MSA films some of its plenary activities at its events, for example lectures and welcome addresses. These films are used as a historical record and academic resource and are posted on the MSA’s social media channels where they can be shared. Explicit consent is sought from any presenters included within this filming and audience members are informed in advance of the event and on the day of any filming to take place, so they have an opportunity to avoid being captured. Any audience members are given opportunities and methods to either avoid being filmed or have any images taken deleted at a later date.

4. Use of your information

The MSA uses your personal information to deliver a range of benefits, services and activities as defined by its Constitution and charitable objectives. These might include:

• To determine whether you are eligible for member benefits dependent on your institutional affiliation – e.g. voting rights in elections, discounted event fees, access to funding.
• To process your attendance at an MSA event – e.g. processing of academic assessment via peer review, registration and payments, timetabling, production of the online and printed programmes and participant badges, production of signing-in sheets or systems, booking of hotel accommodation or any other services requested.
• To process the submission and peer review of your article via a third-party peer review system managed by our publishing partners.
• To allow you to join and participate in Working Groups and Regional Networks.
• To allow the running of electronic elections, including for the Executive Committee, the Financial and the Ethics Committee.
• To analyse trends in participation in MSA events and activities across gender, geography, generations and research field for the purpose of meeting the MSA’s objectives of furthering the discipline of memory studies.
• To conduct minimal manual profiling to target communications based on interest, provision of services and membership benefit.
• To send out service and marketing communications via our preferred third-party providers.

We retain a record of your personal information in order to provide you with a high quality and consistent service. We will always retain your personal information in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and personal data shall be kept for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which it is being processed.

You can review and make changes to your information and email subscription list preferences at any time in your MSA Members’ account.

5. Sharing of your information

We may share your personal information with other organisations in the following circumstances:

• If the law or public authority says we must share personal information; or
• If we need to share personal information in order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights (this includes providing personal data to others for the purposes of preventing fraud and reducing credit risk).

The MSA will not share your personal information with any unaffiliated third parties except for the strict purposes of delivering contractual services. Any data transferred will be limited to necessity, anonymised where possible and encrypted when transferred. Any sharing of data will be subject to separate Data Processing Agreements (DPAs) with the recipients.

Personal information is collected by online peer review systems used by the MSA’s publishing partners. This data is collected upon separate agreement between the user and the owner of the system and is not collected or transferred from the MSA’s website.

Some individual users affiliated to the MSA may be given access to specific sets of personal information via the MSA website for a specific purpose and time frame, for example Working Group Chairs, Section or Workshop Chairs, Trustees, Academic Convenors and members of MSA staff. In these cases, access to data is limited only to that required to perform their specific role and is subject to a separate written agreement requiring them to adhere to the MSA’s data protection policies.

6. Cross border transfers

Because the MSA operates to a large extent within Europe, most transfers of data will be within the European Union and therefore covered by GDPR. Where transfers are outside of the EU, we will ensure the recipients adhere to equivalent data protection laws. By submitting your personal information, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing of your information. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your personal information is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy and all applicable data protection laws.

7. Links to third party websites

The MSA’s websites or services (including those of its Working Groups and Regional Networks) may include links to third-party websites. In using such links, please be aware that each third-party website is subject to its own privacy and data protection policies and is not covered by our Privacy Policy. In addition, we allow third-party companies to serve ads and/or collect certain anonymous information when you visit our websites. These companies may be placing and reading cookies in the cookie file of the browser on your computer's hard disk or using web beacons or other technologies to collect information in the course of ads being served on this website. These companies may use information other than personal information (e.g., clickstream information, browser type, time and date, subject of advertisements clicked or scrolled over) during your visits to these and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services likely to be of greater interest to you.

When using our websites and/or mobile applications, you may be able to share information through social networks like Facebook or Twitter. For example, when you ‘like’ or ‘share’ our content. When doing this, your personal information may be visible to the providers of those social networks and/or their other users. Please remember it is your responsibility to set appropriate privacy settings on your social network accounts so you are comfortable with how your information is used and shared on them.

8. Security

The MSA will use appropriate physical, technical and administrative safeguards to protect your data. Access to your personal data will be restricted to only those who need to know that information and require it to perform their job function. In addition, we train our employees about the importance of maintaining the confidentiality and security of your information.

We take security measures to protect your information, including:

• Limiting access to our buildings to those that we believe are entitled to be there, by use of passes, key card access and other related technologies;
• Implementing access controls to our information technology – we use appropriate procedures and technical security measures (including strict encryption, anonymisation and archiving techniques) to safeguard your information across all our computer systems, networks, websites, mobile apps and offices;
• Never asking you for your passwords;
• Advising you never to enter your username and password into an email.

9. Cookies

As is true of most websites, we gather certain information automatically. This information may include IP addresses, browser type, Internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, the files viewed on our site (e.g., HTML pages, graphics, etc.), operating system, date-time stamp, and/or clickstream data to analyse trends and administer the site.

The MSA use cookies or similar technologies to analyse trends, administer the website, identify and fix bugs, track users' movements around the website, and to gather demographic information about our user base as a whole. You can control the use of cookies at the individual browser level, but if you choose to disable cookies, it may limit your use of certain features or functions on our website or services.

10. Your rights

You have the right to make a written request to be informed whether or not we hold or process any of your personal information (by emailing info@memorystudiesassociation.org). In your written request, you may:

• Request that we provide you with details of your personal information that we process, the purpose for which it is processed, the recipients of such information, the existence of any automated decision making involving your personal information, and the transfer safeguards we have in place;
• Request that we rectify any errors in your personal information;
• Request that we limit the processing of or delete your personal information if our continued processing of such information is not justified;
• Request that we transfer your personal information to a third party;
• Object to automated decision-making and profiling based on legitimate interests or the performance of a task in the public interest (in which event the processing will cease except where there are compelling legitimate grounds, such as when the processing is necessary for the performance of a contract between us);
• Object to direct marketing from us; and
• Object to processing for purposes of scientific, historical research and statistics.

Where applicable under your local laws, we will not use your personal information for marketing purposes, nor disclose your information to any third parties, unless we have your prior consent. We will seek your consent every time you sign up for or renew your membership. You can exercise your right to prevent such processing by checking certain boxes on the consent forms we use when collecting your personal information. If at any point you wish to review or change your preferences, you can use the ‘opt-out’ or 'unsubscribe' mechanism or other means provided within the communications that you receive from us or by sending an email to info@memorystudiesassociation.org. Note that you may still receive transactional communications from the MSA.

11. Changes to this Privacy Policy

Please note that the MSA’s Privacy Policy is reviewed periodically. The MSA reserves the right to modify its Privacy Policy at any time without notice. Any changes to the Privacy Policy will be posted on this page and will become effective on the date of posting. We encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on our privacy practices.

12. Recourse

Any comments, complaints or questions concerning this policy or complaints or objections about our use of your personal information should be addressed by directing your comments at info@memorystudiesassociation.org.