Privacy Notice

Purpose of this Notice

This Notice explains how the University, through the International Medieval Congress (IMC) team, will collect and use your personal data. Throughout this Notice, “University” “we”, “our” and “us” refers to the University of Leeds. “you” and “your” refers to IMC delegates, exhibitors, and other individuals involved in IMC activities.

We are the data controller for personal data that we process about you. We shall process your personal data in accordance with the UK General Data Protection Regulations (or GDPR for short). This Notice complies with requirements under GDPR (2018).

We will not use your personal data in any manner that is incompatible with the purpose for which the data were collected originally, unless we have obtained your consent to that additional use.

Anything you are not clear about

If there is anything you are unclear about, please contact imc@leeds.ac.uk with the subject line ‘Data Protection’ or our Data Protection Officer who shall be happy to answer any queries you may have concerning this Notice or the way in which we process your personal data.

The Data Protection Officer’s contact details are provided at the end of this Notice.

Where does the University get your personal data from?

We obtain personal data regarding you from the following sources:

Data you provided when you:

registered for any International Medieval Congress in the past
provided information through submission of a paper proposal via our websites or via paper copy for a previous International Medieval Congress
provided information through submission of a session proposal via our websites or via paper copy for a previous International Medieval Congress
provided information via a session organiser through submission of a session proposal via our websites or via paper copy for a previous International Medieval Congress
notified the IMC to be added to its database or mailing lists
booked advertising, sponsorship or exhibition space at any International Medieval Congress
updated your profile in the virtual event platform.

Third party sources:

from third party sources such as an organiser of one or more academic sessions submitted to an IMC
from third party sources such as the organiser of an exhibition stand which you have staffed

Categories of personal data being processed

Personal data, including video and audio recording of any participation you choose to make in IMC sessions, will be collected through the recording of your participation in IMC sessions. Recordings are made in order to facilitate non-synchronous viewing by registered attendees in different time zones within the secure online event platform only. Public ‘chat’ contributions made within public parts of the online event platform will be recorded and viewable to all registered delegates.

We may also collect some special category personal data (for example about your racial or ethnic origin, religious beliefs or other beliefs, physical or mental health). This data would only be used if you have directly provided it yourself, for example during one-to-one conversations or email exchanges with our team, or it has been collected for event management purposes e.g. for assessing access requirements arising from a disability.

The data we may process includes:

Your title (such as Miss, Mr., Mrs., Mx., Dr. or Prof.), name (including former name or alias), date of birth (to confirm you are entitled to concessionary registration fees or bursaries);
Information relating to any medical conditions or disabilities that might affect your experience at the IMC;
Your departmental and institutional affiliation;
Information on whether you are a postgraduate student or retired;
Your contact information (address, telephone, fax, email);
Details of your current and past session and paper proposals, including any withdrawals from the IMC;
Details regarding your registration, event, and excursion bookings, or cancellations;
Forms of identification, such as passports or student ID cards, to confirm you are entitled to concessionary registration fees or bursaries;
Details on method of payment;
Financial information, if you supply this in support of an application for a bursary or low-waged registration fee.
Video and audio recordings of your participation in IMC sessions hosted on the online event platform as an attendee, speaker, moderator, round table participant, or other active involvement in IMC sessions
Public ‘chat’ contributions made within public parts of the online event platform

As with most websites certain actions you take will be recorded anonymously as cookies by the University’s websites. Please see the section on Cookies below.

The purposes for which we process your personal data

Generally, we process your personal data for the administration of your position as a submitter, delegate, or exhibitor at the IMC, as well as for promotional purposes. This includes:

Contacting you about the status of your paper, session, or bursary proposal, as well as your registration, or any other issue we deem to be of relevance to your attendance at the IMC;
Sending you a copy of the IMC programme, if you expressed an interest in attending that year’s IMC. This may be a digital file, download link or printed book depending on availability/preference;
Creating your speaker and/or user profile and agenda items in the IMC online event platform;
Creating tickets and name badges;
Passing details of your bookings to accommodation providers and other service providers;
Passing your details to certified third parties for compliance with financial screening regulations;
Passing your contact details to session organisers for consideration and selection of papers for presentation;
Passing your contact details to session moderators for the purpose of pre-event introductions and preparation;
Contacting you, with your consent, for marketing and publicity purposes, including, but not limited to, the January and August IMC Newsletters;
Gathering feedback from you after you have attended the IMC.

Keeping your data up to date

If you would like your data to be updated, please either email imc@leeds.ac.uk or call +44 (0)113 343 3614. We will respond to your request to confirm your data has been updated.

Who can see your data?

Your data is held securely within the University where access is strictly controlled and staff receive training on data protection.

We will share some of your data with third parties engaged in the administration of the event including online platforms charged with abstract management, payment, registration, ticket production, and conference management systems (including the recording, transcribing, streaming and dissemination of conference sessions). Where we do so we will ensure that only the minimum amount of data necessary is shared, that appropriate contractual arrangements are in place governing the secure processing of your data and that recipients are aware of their duty of confidentiality. Typically, the types of data shared will include your name, affiliation, session & paper details, booking selections, email address and information you choose to add to your online event profile.

If you are applying to propose a session or a paper your data and that of other participants in a session you propose will be shared electronically with an international Programming Committee, some of whom may be based outside of the European Economic Area.

We may pass your proposal information and contact details on to session organisers and moderators for the purposes of selection of papers to be presented, pre-event introductions and preparation.

We employ IT experts from outside of the University to aid with the development of our systems.

We are legally required to comply with all sanctions regimes imposed by UK law by conducting due diligence screening. To ensure compliance with financial sanctions and other regulations, we may respectfully request delegates provide information in advance of registration to ensure that no relevant financial sanctions regimes are breached, and to ensure our bank will accept payments from prospective delegates. We may share this data with our professional advisors, including our lawyers, bankers and insurers, where necessary in the course of the professional services that they provide to us.

We will not sell or share your data to third parties for commercial purposes.

Third party service providers:

Stova (formerly trading as Aventri)

This is a third party abstract management, payment, registration, and conference management system. The IMC obtain personal data when you register for an event organised by IMC or in relation to an event hosted by and managed by the IMC team. Their privacy notice can be found at https://stova.io/privacy-policy/

Confex

This is a third party abstract management, scheduling, and proposal submission system. The IMC obtain personal data either when you submit a proposal or when you are included in a proposal by another submitter or organiser. Confex also provide the online event platform which facilitates virtual participation and recordings of IMC sessions as well as providing updated schedules and networking tools. The platform displays your names, affiliation, participation and other details you choose to share to other IMC delegates. Their privacy notice can be found at https://imc-leeds.confex.com/imc/f/ssodhnjoreel.

Ticketing specialist software provider

IMC will use a specialist software provider to produce tickets and name badges. Data shared will include your name, affiliation, email address, and details of your IMC booking.

Details of the provider will be provided as soon as they are confirmed.

Lawful basis for processing data

Personal data is processed as part of the contract that attendees engage in with the IMC when they register for the event.

IMC has a legitimate interest to capture recordings of the event to facilitate non-synchronous viewing by registered attendees in different time zones. Non-speaking participants who do not wish to be recorded should keep their cameras and mics disabled throughout the entire session (virtual attendees), or refrain from contributing verbally or appearing on camera (in person attendees). Participants who do not wish their paper to be recorded should inform IMC in writing by 02 May 2025.

We have a legal obligation to conduct financial screening in compliance with sanction requirements.

We also process your data from time to time where we believe we have a legitimate commercial interest to do so, in maintaining marketing and publicity communications and in collecting feedback so we can improve the services we offer.

Special category data will only be processed where you provide your consent.

Communications

We will, from time to time, communicate with you by email, post and telephone to pursue the purposes mentioned above. In particular we regularly communicate with people for the following purposes:

share news about the IMC (including its research and services) and its associated parts (including activities we feel are of relevance to people within the fields of medieval studies)
invite you to IMCs and associated events

Communications, such as emails from us, will include the means for you to opt out of further contact.
If you prefer not to have your personal data used for any or all of the above purposes, please email imc@leeds.ac.uk or call +44 (0)113 343 3614.

Retention

We will seek to keep data related to your academic participation in the IMC, e.g. paper and session details, until you request that we remove it from our system. If you ask us to remove your personal data, this will mean any live online information about your papers and sessions will no longer be visible.

We keep records relating to your registration and payment for 6 years for financial, audit and statistical purposes. We will also continue to keep your data for communication purposes until you have indicated that you no longer wish to receive this communication.

The IMC 2025 online event platform, including recordings of all sessions and chat records, will remain available for attendees to access until 20 September 2025. After this date the system will only be accessible to IMC staff for administrative purposes. All data will be deleted on or before 1 July 2026.

Chat messages and history in the online event platform will be accessible to all registered delegates until 20 September 2025 and, after this date, only be accessible to IMC staff for administrative purposes. All platform data will be deleted on or before 1 July 2026.

At any time, you can get in touch to ask us to remove your personal data, including recordings, from our system, or to stop contacting you for marketing purposes. Please note that even if you ask us not to contact you or to retain your personal data, we will still need to keep a minimal amount of information so we can keep a record that you have asked us not to contact you.

Cookies

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your device by websites that you visit.

We use cookies for the following purposes:

Performance tracking: Track how our website is used and help us make improvements

Performance and advertising cookies

These cookies help our website function

Cookie Name: __utma, __utmb, __utmc, __utmv, __utmz, __ga, __gat, __nid

Description: Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, AdWords and Facebook re-marketing

Purpose: These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our website. We use the information to compile reports and to help us improve the site. These cookies are also used to track users’ interests and then provide targeted advertising on other websites. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited.

Information:

Cookie Name: PREF*, VSC*, VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE*, remote_sid*

Description: YouTube

Purpose: We embed videos from our official YouTube channel using YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode. This mode may set cookies on your computer once you click on the YouTube video player, but YouTube will not store personally-identifiable cookie information for playbacks of embedded videos using the privacy-enhanced mode.

Information: Read more about YouTube’s embedding videos.

If you share content from our website through other websites, for example Facebook or Twitter, cookies or a form of tracking may be used by these services and you need to manage your privacy via your account (and not through our site).

You can manage your privacy settings, including cookies, through your browser settings.

See the University of Leeds website for further information on Cookies.

Further information about cookies can be found on the Information Commissioner’s Office website.

Your rights as a data subject

Under GDPR you have the right to:

Withdraw consent where that is the legal basis of our processing;
Access your personal data that we process;
Rectify inaccuracies in personal data that we hold about you;
Be forgotten, that is your details to be removed from systems that we use to process your personal data;
Restrict the processing in certain ways;
Obtain a copy of your data in a commonly used electronic form; and
Object to certain processing of your personal data by us.

Please see https://ico.org.uk for further information on the above rights. You may also contact the Data Protection Officer for further information.

You have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office about the way in which we process your personal data. Please see https://ico.org.uk.