What are cookies?
A cookie is a small text file that is stored in your browser and will be transmitted back to the website that set it when your browser makes another request for something from that website. Some other technologies also store data on your device for transmission back to the originating website, or act to identify your device in future requests (for example, Local Storage and web beacons). These are not actually cookies, but our policy and the statements here apply to all such technologies.
This site uses cookies to improve your experience in a number of ways, and to enable us to see how well the site is serving the needs of the people that use it.
What cookies does the British Academy website set?
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires website owners to have a legal basis for setting any cookies that contain “personal” data – “personal” being broadly defined to include anything that could identify an individual. It does not therefore cover all cookies, and there are several legal bases for their use when they are covered, but at the British Academy we seek to give you as much choice and control as possible over the cookies used on our site. To this end we seek your explicit consent for much of the functionality that would set cookies, which we seek through our cookie consent tool. This tool groups the cookies according to their purpose, using the categories that follow.
Necessary
These we regard as essential for the proper functioning of the website (and for nothing else), and we do not provide a means to turn them off. You can use browser controls to do this but may experience problems with the site as a result. The following table shows the necessary cookies that may be set during your visit, together with the domain that they are linked to and their function.
Necessary
Analytics
These cookies let us monitor how many people come to the site and how they reached it, and then learn which pages they visit and how they interact with them. The cookies do not contain any sensitive information, only alphanumeric identifiers. Whilst identifiers are regarded as personal, the data are aggregated so we cannot see who has visited or what they have done.
Analytics are turned off by default when you visit the British Academy site, but can be turned on with our cookie control tool. They are first party cookies (that is, tied to the British Academy domain), which means that when you turn them off we can delete them from your browser. If you disable these cookies we cannot know that you have visited the site or improve how well it works for you. The following tables shows the analytics cookies that may be set during your visit.
Surveys and marketing
We use some additional tools to help us understand what visitors want and how they arrive at the website. Sometimes we run surveys (from Informizely) to ask people about their experience and what they might like to see on the site.
We also use a "pixel" from Facebook and Twitter so we can tell when people have seen one of our promotions or campaigns on Facebook or Twitter and so understand if they are working for us. This functionality is turned off by default, but if you enable it then it will help us to make a better site. The following table shows the cookies that may be set for surveys and marketing during your visit.
Maps and media
We embed some content on the site that comes from other services, namely maps (from Google Maps, to show our location), videos (hosted at YouTube) and audio (hosted by SoundCloud and Transistor.fm). When embedded like this they may set third-party cookies – that is, cookies associated with the domain of a host other than thebritishacademy.ac.uk. In addition, if you are logged into one of these services then cookies from their domains may already be on your device and will be exchanged with the service when your browser requests the media. Maps and media are turned off by default so that these third-party cookies are not set, but you can enable them if you want to see/hear the media or view the map.
Controlling cookies
The cookies itemised above, with the exception of the "necessary" category, can be managed with our cookie consent tool. You can toggle each category on or off as you please, and the tool should always be available at the lower left corner of the window for you to change your consents. Please note that the majority of cookies are "first party", meaning they are linked to the domain name of this website, and if you remove consent then the tool can delete them directly.
However the functions in the "Maps and media" category set third-party cookies and the consent tool cannot delete these once they are set. They are turned off by default, but should you enable them and subsequently wish to revoke consent and remove the cookies, you will need to do so via your browser settings or following the directions given by YouTube / Google and SoundCloud.