Privacy Statement

This is the privacy statement for the website / which is run and provided by the Society for Renaissance Studies (‘The Society’, 'The SRS', 'we', 'us', 'our'). The Society is a registered Charity (Number 1025890) and is governed by an elected Council, which meets three times a year to manage our activities.

We will only use the personal data gathered over this website as set out in this statement. Here, you will find information on how we use your personal data, the purposes for which your personal data is used, who we share it with, and what control and information rights you may have.

i. Summary of our processing activities

The following summary provides you with an overview of the processing activities that are undertaken on our website. More detailed information is available under the indicated sections below.

  • When you visit our website without setting up an account, only limited personal data will be processed to provide you with the website itself (see iii).
  • If you join the Society, you will be issued with a username and password. Further personal data will be processed within the scope of the membership (see iv, v and vi).
  • We never disclose your personal data to third parties other than those who are acting as contracted agents for the SRS (see x). Depending upon your internet provider, personal data may be disclosed to third parties (see xii) and they might be located outside your country of residence; potentially, different data protection standards may apply (see xiii). We have implemented appropriate safeguards to secure your personal data (see xiv) and we retain your personal data only for as long as is necessary (see xv).
  • Under the legislation applicable to you, you may be entitled to exercise certain rights with regard to the processing of your personal data (see xiv).

ii. Definitions

Personal Data: information that relates to a person who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier (a name, an identification number, location data, or an online identifier).

Processing:  any operation which is performed on personal data (collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaptation or any kind of disclosure or other use).

iii. Basic use of the website

When you visit our website without signing in or providing us with personal data in any other form, we may automatically collect additional information about you. This information will contain personal data only in limited cases and only information that is automatically recognised by our server. The data will be:

  • the website from which you have been directed to our website
  • the date and time of your visit to our website
  • the device type, screen resolution and browser version use to visit our website
  • your internet service provider
  • information on your operating system, including language settings
  • information on the specific pages you have visited on our website

We use this information only to help us to provide an effective service (e.g. to adapt our website to the needs of your device or to allow you to log in to our website), and to collect broad demographic information for anonymised, aggregated use.

The personal data automatically collected is necessary for us to provide the website, Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b GDPR, and for our legitimate interest to guarantee the website’s stability and security, Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR.

Personal data that is collected automatically is anonymized immediately. Any personally identifiable information is erased.

iv. Registration for our services

Our website offers an online application form to join the SRS, a webform to contact us (either as a member or as a guest), online application processes for our fellowships and funding, members’ only pages and the option for members to download The Bulletin of the Society for Renaissance Studies. In order to access the members only parts of the website, you need to be a member. When using our services, we process the following:

  • Information (such as your name, country and email address) that is provided by registering as a member
  • Information in connection with an account sign-in facility (e.g. log-in and password details)
  • Communications sent by you (via website communication forms)

Whenever you complete transactions using our website, e.g. submitting an application for a conference grant or a fellowship, further data processing processes may take place. We will process the personal data you provide to:

  • Identify you at sign-in
  • Provide you with the services and information offered through the website or which you request
  • Administer your account
  • Communicate with you

For this, the legal basis is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b GDPR

Your personal data is, in the absence of exceptions mentioned below, retained for as long as your user account is used. After deletion of your account, your personal data will be erased one month later. Statutory storage obligations or the need for legal actions that may arise from misconduct within the services can lead to a longer retention of your personal data. In this case, we will inform you.

v. Information about the specific uses that require registration

To access the members’ only pages, you have to set up an account as described under iv. Your account retains your personal data. You can delete the personal data and cancel your membership in you account’s settings. This processing is based on Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b.]

Upon joining the SRS, you will be issued with a username and password as described under IV. Your member account retains your personal data. You can delete the personal data as well as the account as a whole in your account’s settings. This processing is based on Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b.]

By statutory law we are required to retain the provided financial data in relation to transactions (including address, payment and order information) for 10 years. However, after 2 years we will restrict the processing of your personal data to comply with the statutory requirements and will not process the personal data any further. The retention of your personal data is based on Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. c GDPR.

vi. Newsletter

By registering with this website, you consent to receive emails from the SRS. The legal basis for this processing is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. a GDPR. You can unsubscribe from this service by opting out via the link provided in each email newsletter.

vii. Automated decision making

We do not use your personal data for any automated decision making . This means there are no legal effects concerning you or that significantly affect you.

viii. Analysis

For statistical analyses we use Google Analytics to collect information about the use of this site. The legal basis for this processing is Art. 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR and represents our legitimate interest to analyse our website’s traffic to improve the user’s experience and to optimise the website.

Google Analytics is a web analytics service provided by Google LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA ('Google'). On our behalf Google will use the information generated by a cookie for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity and providing other services relating to website activity and internet activity in connection with the use of the website.

We have activated the IP-anonymisation in the Google Analytics service; your IP address will be truncated within the area of member states of the European Union or other parties to the Agreement in the European Economic Area. Only in exceptional cases will the whole IP address be first transferred to a Google server in the USA and truncated there. The IP-address your browser conveys in Google Analytics will not be associated with any other data held by Google.

You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser. If you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of our website. You may also prevent the collection of information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including you IP address) and the processing of this data by Google if you install the Google Analytics opt-out Browser Add-on, which can be downloaded here.

ix. Third party content and social media plug-ins

1. YouTube, SoundCloud, Ticket Tailor, and Crowdcast

We use Crowdcast, SoundCloud, and YouTube to play videos and podcasts from our website. This processing is based on Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. f GDPR and represents our legitimate interest to improve your website experience. We use Ticket Tailor for the processing of tickets to attend some SRS events and a privacy policy in connection to managing the issuing of tickets via Ticket Tailor can be found in the footer our box office page.

Your browser will directly communicate with

  • Crowdcast Inc., 221 Kearny Street San Francisco, CA 94108 United States.
  • SoundCloud Limited, Rheinsberger Str. 76/77, 10115, Berlin. Germany.
  • Ticket Tailor, Unit 219, Mare Street Studios, 203-213 Mare Street, London, E8 3LY
  • YouTube, LLC, 901 Cherry Ave., San Bruno, CA 94066. USA.

We do not have any influence on Crowdcast's, SoundCloud's, Ticket Tailor's or YouTube’s data processing activities. Please refer to the YouTube privacy policy, the SoundCloud privacy policy, the Ticket Tailor privacy policy and the Crowdcast privacy policy for further details.

2. Links to third party websites

This website contains hypertext links to external websites controlled or maintained by parties other than the Society for Renaissance Studies (indicated by URLs outside the domain /). These links are included for information purposes only as a convenience for the SRS website users and are not intended to signify that the SRS sponsors, endorses, or otherwise approves of these websites and/or their content, any changes or updates to them, or the sites to which they in their turn are linked. The SRS takes no responsibility for any loss or damage suffered through use of these linked resources, or as a result of using the information they supply. Please consult the privacy policy of respective websites for information regarding their data processing activities.

x: Information sharing

Your personal data will only be disclosed to a third party to the extent necessary for the delivery of a hard copy of The Bulletin to our members, secure processing of online payments and email. Legal basis for the transfer of your personal data is Article 6 sec. 1 sent. 1 lit. b and f GDPR.

Activities are carried out under a contract which imposes strict requirements on our suppliers to keep your personal data confidential and secure.

  • Orphans Press print and distribute The Bulletin on our behalf. Consequently, we share with them the name and postal address of members only. Their address is Orphans Press Ltd, Enterprise Park, Leominster, Herefordshire, HR6 0LD. UK
  • Mailchimp processes our email communications. Consequently, we share with them the name and email address of members only.
  • Stripe process online payments on our behalf. We do not have access to your credit and debit card payment details.

We do not share any other personal data with third parties.  We may share your personal data where required to do so for prevention of crime or for taxation purposes (for example, with the police, HMRC) or where otherwise required to do so by other regulators or by law (e.g. the Charity Commission, Companies House).

xi. Cross border data transfers

Within the scope of our information sharing activities set out above, your personal data may be transferred to other countries (including countries outside the EEA); these countries may have different data protection standards from your country of residence. Data processed in a foreign country may be subject to foreign laws and accessible to foreign governments, courts, law enforcement, and regulatory agencies. We will endeavour to take reasonable measures to maintain an adequate level of data protection in the event of your personal data being shared with such countries.

In the case of a transfer outside of the EEA, this transfer is safeguarded by either Privacy Shield or EU Model Clauses. You can find further information about the aforementioned safeguards by contacting the SRS’s Data Protection Officer.

xii. Security

We have taken reasonable security measures to protect against the loss, misuse and alteration of personal data under our control. For example, our security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary and only authorised personnel have access to personal data. Whilst we cannot ensure or guarantee that loss, misuse or alteration of information will never occur, we use all reasonable efforts to prevent it, given that submission of information over the internet is never entirely secure. We cannot guarantee the security of information you submit via our website whilst it is in transit over the internet and any such submission is at your own risk.

All electronic forms that ask you for your financial data will use the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol to encrypt the data between your browser and our servers. If you use a payment card to pay membership subscriptions or make any other purchases through our website, we will pass your payment card details securely to our payment provider. We comply with the payment card industry data security standard (PCI-DSS) published by the PCI Security Standards Council.

xiii. Data retention

We keep our processing activities with respect to your personal data as limited as possible. In the absence of specific retention periods set out in this policy, your personal data will be retained only for as long as we need it to fulfil the purpose for which it was collected and, if applicable, as long as required by statutory retention requirements.

xiv. Your rights

Under the legislation, you may be entitled to exercise some or all of the following rights:​

  • require (1) information as to whether your personal data is retained and (2) access to and/or duplicates of your retained personal data, including the purposes of the processing, the categories of personal data concerned, and the data recipients as well as potential retention periods;
  • request rectification, removal or restriction of your personal data, because, for example, (1) it is incomplete or inaccurate, (2) it is no longer needed for the purposes for which it was collected, (3) the consent on which the processing was based has been withdrawn;
  • refuse to provide and withdraw your consent to the processing of your personal data at any time. This is without impact to data processing activities that have taken place before any such withdrawal;
  • object on grounds relating to your particular situation, that your personal data shall be subject to processing. In this case, please provide us with information about your particular situation. After the assessment of the facts presented by you we will either stop processing your personal data or present you our compelling legitimate grounds for an ongoing processing; and/or
  • take legal actions in relation to any potential breach of your rights regarding the processing of your personal data, as well as to lodge complaints before the competent data protection regulators.
  • require (1) to receive the personal data concerning you, which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and (2) to transmit those data to another controller without hindrance from our side; where technically feasible you shall have the right to have the personal data transmitted directly from us to another controller;
  • not to be subject to any automated decision making, including profiling (automatic decisions based on data processing by automatic means, for the purpose of assessing several personal aspects) which produce legal effects on you or affects you with similar significance.

You may exercise the rights referred to above, or pose any questions, or make any complaints regarding our data processing by contacting us under the contact details set out below.

xv. Contacting us

Please submit any questions, concerns or comments you have about this privacy policy or any requests concerning your personal data by email to our Data Protection Officer. Our Data Protection Officer is the Honorary Chair of the SRS and can be contacted by email address (available via the list of Council Members), or through contacting them through the website.

The information you provide when contacting us will be processed to handle your request and will be erased when your request is completed. Alternatively, we will restrict the processing of the respective information in accordance with statutory retention requirements.

xvi Amendments to this statement

We reserve the right to change this statement from time to time by updating our website respectively. Please visit the website regularly to check our data policy. This statement was last updated on 10 March 2024.