Privacy Policy

Last updated: 25 October 2026

This policy explains how the Geneva Centre on Knowledge Governance collects and uses personal data, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and the rights you have. It covers our website knowledgegov.org, our events system events.knowledgegov.org (CKG Connections), our events, and our newsletters.

1. Who we are

The Geneva Centre on Knowledge Governance (“CKG”, “we”, “us”) is an associated programme of the Geneva Graduate Institute. The legal entity responsible for the personal data described here (the controller) is the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID), Geneva, Switzerland; CKG runs the activities described and handles questions about them.

Contact for anything about your data: privacy@knowledgegov.org, Geneva Centre on Knowledge Governance, Chemin Eugène-Rigot 2, 1202 Geneva, Switzerland.

2. The laws we follow

We are based in Switzerland and follow the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP). Because our events and newsletters are open to people in the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and elsewhere, we also apply the standards of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the UK GDPR, and the privacy laws of the US states and other countries that apply to us. Where these laws differ, we apply the more protective rule.

3. What we collect and why

When you apply for or register for an event

• What: your name, email address, organisation and position, phone number and country, and what you tell us in the form: for example how you will attend, a short biography or motivation, the topic of your contribution, documents you upload (such as a CV or paper), fees, contributions or scholarship requests, travel and accommodation needs and travel support, and any dietary or accessibility needs. If you present, also your paper, slides and photo. If you nominate someone, the details you give us about them: please let them know. Our staff also keep notes needed to organise events and follow up with participants.
• Why: to consider your application, organise the event, contact you about it, arrange travel or visas where we support them, and put together the programme.
• Legal basis: taking the steps you asked for before and during your participation (GDPR art. 6(1)(b)); for dietary and accessibility needs, which can reveal health information, your explicit consent, which you give by telling us (art. 9(2)(a)); you can withdraw it at any time.

Your participant page

Each participant gets a personal page (“your page”) reached through a private link we email you. There you can see and update your details, your sessions, papers, photos and recordings. The link works like a key: please do not share it.

At our events: photos, recordings and transcripts

• What: photographs; audio and video recordings of sessions; written transcripts made from the recordings (on our own computers; AI assistance helps us name the speakers and correct the text); short video clips (“knowledge bites”) and quotes taken from what speakers said.
• Why: to document the event and share its knowledge: on our website, in event reports, on our YouTube channel and our social media (for example LinkedIn), and on your own participant page.
• Legal basis: our legitimate interest in documenting and sharing public discussion of knowledge policy (GDPR art. 6(1)(f)). We tell participants in advance that sessions are recorded. Sessions held under the Chatham House Rule or marked as closed are not published.
• Your choices: you can ask us not to publish, or to take down, a photo, clip or recording of you, and we will do so unless there is an overriding reason (for example, a full recording of a public panel; even then we will consider cutting or blurring). On your participant page you can remove photos of yourself directly. To help match photos to people, our staff may compare faces in photos, in their own browser; this only suggests names, which a person then checks, and no face templates are kept.

Newsletters (Mailchimp)

• What: your email address, name, and, if you give them, your organisation and interests; whether you open our newsletters and click links in them.
• Why: to send you news of our work and events.
• Legal basis: your consent (GDPR art. 6(1)(a)), or, for people who took part in our events, our legitimate interest in telling them about similar events, with an easy way to say no. Every newsletter has an unsubscribe link.

Blog and paper authors

Authors’ names, biographies and photos are published with their papers and blog posts, with their agreement. Where we pay for a contribution, we keep the invoice and payment details as accounting rules require.

When you contact us

We keep your messages and our replies so that we can answer you and follow up (legitimate interest, art. 6(1)(f)).

Visiting our website

Our web servers keep standard technical logs (IP address, browser, pages requested, time) for security and to fix problems, for a short time. With your consent we use Google Analytics to understand how the site is used (see section 8, Cookies).

4. Who we share data with

We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it for advertising. We share it only as follows:

• Publicly, as part of an event: speakers’ names, affiliations, biographies, photos, papers, slides, recordings, transcripts and quotes are published in the programme, event reports and our channels, as described above.
• Our partners in an event (for example a co-organising university), when they need it to run the event with us.
• The Geneva Graduate Institute, where it provides services to us (for example rooms, administration).
• Service providers who process data for us, under contracts that bind them to protect it and use it only for us:
  • Hostinger (hosting of our websites and events system);
  • Supabase (the database of our events system);
  • Google (Google Workspace: email, calendar, documents and file storage; Google Analytics, with consent; YouTube, where we publish recordings);
  • Mailchimp (Intuit) (newsletters);
  • Zoom (online meetings and hybrid sessions);
  • Anthropic (AI assistance in our own staff tools, such as proofreading texts and drafting summaries of sessions; Anthropic does not use this data to train its models);
  • LinkedIn (where we post about our work and events);
  • our email delivery provider, for messages sent by the events system;
  • map and weather services in our staff tools (OpenStreetMap, Open-Meteo), which receive only place and organisation names;
  • Google Fonts, from which our events system loads its typefaces (your browser contacts Google when it does).
• Authorities, where the law requires it.

YouTube

We publish recordings of our events on our YouTube channel (Geneva Centre on Knowledge Governance). Our events system uses YouTube API Services to upload our own videos to our own channel, add their titles, descriptions and captions, and make them public after review. When you watch our videos on YouTube, or a page of ours that embeds them, YouTube’s Terms of Service apply, and Google processes data as described in the Google Privacy Policy.

The events system does not collect or store any information about YouTube viewers. The only YouTube data it keeps is about our own videos (their IDs, titles, privacy settings and captions), and the access key that lets it manage our channel, which is stored encrypted. That access can be withdrawn at any time in the Google account’s security settings or from the events system itself; when it is withdrawn, the stored key is deleted at once.

5. Data sent outside Switzerland and the EU

Some of these providers store or process data outside Switzerland and the European Economic Area, notably in the United States. Where they do, we rely on the safeguards the law provides: adequacy decisions (including the EU–US and Swiss–US Data Privacy Frameworks, for providers certified under them) or the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses, as recognised in Switzerland. You can ask us for details.

6. How long we keep data

• Applications not accepted: up to 2 years, so that we can consider you for later events, then deleted.
• Participants’ details: for as long as we run related events and keep our records of past events, and in any case as long as accounting and funders’ rules require (often 10 years for financial records).
• Published event material (programmes, recordings, transcripts, photos, reports): kept as a public record of the event, unless you ask for something about you to be taken down.
• Newsletter list: until you unsubscribe.
• Website analytics: according to the retention setting in Google Analytics.
• Backups: our events system keeps daily safety copies for 14 days and monthly copies for a year, after which they are deleted. It also keeps a history of changes, so that mistakes can be undone; when we delete your data at your request, we delete it from that history too.

7. Your rights

Wherever you are, you can ask us:

• for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, and information about how we use it (access);
• to correct it (much of it you can also correct yourself on your participant page);
• to delete it, or to stop or limit using it;
• to object to our using it on the basis of legitimate interests, including publishing photos or recordings of you;
• to give you the data you provided in a common electronic format, or send it to someone else (portability);
• to withdraw your consent at any time (this does not affect what was done before).

Write to privacy@knowledgegov.org. We answer within 30 days, free of charge. We may ask you to confirm who you are.

You also have the right to complain to a data protection authority: in Switzerland, the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC, edoeb.admin.ch); in the EU, the authority of the country where you live or work; in the UK, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). We would appreciate the chance to resolve your concern first.

For residents of US states with privacy laws (such as California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia): you have the rights above to know, access, correct and delete. We do not sell or “share” personal data for targeted advertising, and we do not use it for profiling with legal effects. We will not treat you differently for using your rights.

8. Cookies

• Necessary cookies keep you signed in to your participant page or the staff system, remember choices you make, and protect forms. They are needed for the site to work and are set without consent.
• Analytics cookies (Google Analytics) tell us how many people visit and which pages they read. We use them only if you agree, and you can change your choice at any time.

Our pages may show content from YouTube or LinkedIn (for example an embedded video). Those services may set their own cookies when you play or view that content.

9. Security

We protect personal data with access controls (only staff who need it can see it, each with their own sign-in), encrypted connections, encrypted storage of access keys, and regular backups. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach puts your data at risk, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

10. Children

Our events and newsletters are meant for adults. We do not knowingly collect data from children under 16.

11. Changes

We may update this policy. The date at the top shows when it last changed; for important changes we will tell participants and subscribers by email.