Privacy Notice

Effective Date: 1 June 2025

This Privacy Policy outlines how the Defence Research Network (“we”, “our”, or “us”) collects, uses, stores, and protects your personal information. We are committed to safeguarding the privacy of our community and complying with the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Who We Are

The Defence Research Network is a volunteer-led organisation dedicated to fostering academic engagement in the field of defence and security studies. We operate on a not-for-profit basis and do not engage in commercial sales or marketing.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, you can contact us at: [email protected].

What information we collect

We only collect the personal data necessary to manage our mailing list and keep you informed about our activities.

When you sign up for our newsletter, we may collect:

Name (if provided)
Email Address (required)
Institution or Affiliation (optional)

We do not collect any sensitive personal data (also known as “special category data”) or data from children.

How We Use Your Information

We use your information only for the following purposes:

To send you newsletters, updates, and event information.
To manage your preferences or respond to any enquiries.
To improve the effectiveness of our communications (e.g., tracking open rates or link clicks through our email platform).

We do not use your data for automated decision-making or profiling. We will never sell your information or share it with third parties for marketing purposes.

Legal basis for processing

Under the UK GDPR, we process your personal data on the basis of consent - you have given us clear permission to email you by subscribing to our newsletter.

You may withdraw your consent at any time by clicking the “unsubscribe” link in our emails or by contacting us directly.

We use trusted third-party providers to manage (Ghost) and distribute (Mailgun) our newsletters. These providers are contractually bound to process your data in accordance with data protection laws and are not permitted to use it for their own purposes.

We will not share your personal information with any other third parties unless required to do so by law.

Data Storage and Retention

Your data is stored securely either within the UK or in countries with adequate data protection standards, as determined by the UK government.

We retain your data:

For as long as you remain subscribed to our newsletter.
Until you withdraw consent, at which point your data will be deleted from our systems within 30 days.

Your Rights

As a data subject under the UK GDPR, you have the following rights:

Right to access – Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
Right to rectification – Request correction of any inaccurate or incomplete data.
Right to erasure – Ask us to delete your data ("right to be forgotten").
Right to restrict processing – Request a pause on how we use your data.
Right to object – Object to processing of your data in certain situations.
Right to data portability – Request your data in a machine-readable format.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us at [email protected].

If you are not satisfied with how we handle your data, you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Cookies and Website Analytics

Our website is hosted using the Ghost platform, and we use Mailgun to manage and distribute our email newsletters. These services include limited built-in analytics features that help us understand how our content is being accessed and engaged with.

Website Analytics

Ghost may collect anonymised data such as:

Page views and visit duration
Browser type and device information
Referring websites

This information is used in aggregate to monitor site performance and improve user experience. We do not use tracking cookies for advertising or user profiling purposes.

Email Engagement

Mailgun provides basic engagement metrics, such as:

Whether an email was successfully delivered
Whether an email was opened
Whether links within the email were clicked

This data helps us understand the effectiveness of our communications and improve future content. These metrics are anonymised or aggregated wherever possible, and are not used to create personal profiles or make decisions about individual subscribers.

You can opt out of email tracking by unsubscribing from our newsletter at any time using the link provided in each email.

Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy occasionally to reflect changes in the law or our operations. The latest version will always be available on our website, and significant changes will be communicated to our subscribers via email.

Contact Us

If you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or how your data is handled, please get in touch via email at [email protected].