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Who we are
The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a public research university based in Norwich, England. UEA is a registered data controller of your information, which means we collect, use and store personal information about you as an Alumni of UEA.
For the purposes of this notice Alumni is defined as any individual who has undertaken a course based at or delivered by UEA including those who have undertaken undergraduate or postgraduate taught courses or postgraduate research and may include honorary graduates, fellows, visiting students and those who have undertaken short courses and other non-credit bearing courses at UEA.
If you are also a Friend or Supporter of UEA, please read our Friends and Supporters Privacy Notice.
We do our utmost to protect your privacy. We have security systems and procedures to protect information from unauthorised disclosure, misuse, or destruction.
What information we collect about you
During your involvement with UEA as a student we will have collected a great deal of information about you. As set out in our Applicant and Student Privacy Notice, we will continue to hold this data, ordinarily for six years after the end of your course, after which time, we will reduce this to a core record consisting of your personal details, identification information, enrolment status, academic details and financial information, which we need to keep indefinitely as part of our public task as a provider of higher education.
During your involvement with UEA as alumni, the following personal information is collected, used, and stored securely by us:
Identifying Data – information that identifies you including your name, date of birth, image/photo, voice, ULN (unique learner number)
Educational/Professional Data – information about your education, UEA scholarships, achievements, career and employment
Location Data – information about your access to, engagement with and use of UEA’s facilities and services including ANPR and CCTV
Your Preferences – information about how you like to be contacted and what you would like to receive
Contact Data – information used to contact you including address, phone number and email address
Social Data – information about your personal circumstances including your interests, volunteering, social media URLs, social network and philanthropic activities
Financial Data – including account, ownership, transactional and credit information
Communications Data - information about communications, transactions and interactions we’ve had with you, including any events you have registered for / attended
Membership Data – information about any clubs and society memberships you may have participated in as a student or alumni
Media Coverage – information including press mentions, career highlights, life achievements and awards, interviews and profiles
Sensitive Information – information provided by you for specific purposes eg disability and dietary preferences for event management
Criminal Data – criminal convictions or cautions (where in the public domain).
How and when we collect this information
UEA will have collected some of this information about you during your studies and will have transferred this data to our alumni database when you graduated.
A significant proportion of the information we process is provided by you to us, for example by filling in forms on our website or by corresponding with us by telephone, email, face-to-face, etc.
We occasionally augment the data we hold about you with information from publicly available sources and third party organisations. Where relevant, we use targeted internet searches and search various websites to obtain and maintain the accuracy of data we hold.
The information we get from other organisations may depend on your privacy settings or the responses you give to these websites. We recommend that you check these settings regularly.
Why we collect and how we use this information
We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we consider that we need to use it for another related reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your data for an unrelated purpose, we will seek your consent to use it for that new purpose.
UEA collects personal information from you to perform its public tasks as a provider of higher education and research and uses it:
For all administration relating to UEA’s relationship with you as an Alumni.
This includes, but is not limited to:
Sending you news and updates
Administration relating to the financial aspects of your relationship with UEA and any related funders
Updating your records
Dealing with queries and complaints.
UEA collects personal information from you to comply with the law and uses it:
To conduct statutory returns
For UKVI visa purposes
To fulfil our legal duties under safeguarding and Prevent laws or where a potential public health risk is identified.
UEA collects personal information from you for its or your legitimate interests:
For all administration relating to any of the following:
To conduct data analysis so that we can target our activities and communications accordingly
To measure the effectiveness of our approach to working with Alumni
To undertake research, including wealth screening, to improve our understanding and identify potential friends and supporters of UEA
To provide statistics on alumni destinations, to inform our student recruitment marketing and careers support
To conduct data cleansing, surveys, census, questionnaires or feedback to enable us to ensure that we hold valid, accurate and up to date information about you
To inform you about news, activities, programmes, events, opportunities or services that we believe would be of interest to you
To undertake due diligence
To maintain our record keeping including the management of any feedback or complaints.
UEA may use your information with your consent:
To send UEA marketing communications.
Sensitive Information
Access to and the sharing of this kind of ‘special category’ personal information has extra protection. Where we do use your sensitive personal information, we will either have obtained your explicit consent or there will be a substantial public interest reason with a basis in law.
The reasons for using this information include to prevent or detect unlawful acts, to protect the public, or to address safeguarding issues. It may also include the monitoring of disability data to facilitate access to buildings; information about race and ethnicity for monitoring our responsibilities under the Equality Act 2010; medical information required to provide learning support. Other reasons to use this information would be for employment, social security, and social protection purposes (such as public health issues, accidents or occupational health etc).
Who we may share your information with
UEA may share your information with third parties where there is a legitimate or legal reason to do so or because you asked us to.
These external organisations may include:
Statutory, Regulatory & Government bodies
JISC/Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), the Home Office, UK Visas and Immigration, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Department of Health, Department of Education, HM Revenue and Customs, Health & Safety Executive, Office for Students (OFS), Student Loans Company (SLC), funding bodies, relevant professional or statutory regulatory bodies and other course accrediting organisations, local authorities, the police, and other law enforcement agencies.
Third party providers of goods or services
Software providers, insurers, auditors, event hosts, mailing houses, providers of alumni related services eg data cleansing providers, alumni relations & development programme agencies, due diligence, wealth screening, research & statistical providers.
We will not normally disclose your personal information to other external organisations without your consent unless it is in the event of a medical emergency.
Where UEA shares your information with any organisation based outside the UK, appropriate safeguards will be in place to protect your personal information.
Other
Educational and research partners, funders and donors
We will not normally disclose your personal information to other external organisations without your consent unless it is in the event of a medical emergency.
Where UEA shares your information with any organisation based outside the UK, appropriate safeguards will be in place to protect your personal information.
How long we keep your information
We will keep your personal information only as long as it is necessary for the purpose it was collected and in accordance with UEA’s records retention schedule. This means that, in normal circumstances, your alumni data will be kept for as long as you support your relationship with the University, or until you request us to do otherwise, whilst your core data will be kept indefinitely as part of our public task as a provider of higher education.
UEA will always store your personal information safely and will never disclose it to any other person unlawfully.
Your rights
Under data protection law, you have rights including:
Right of access – you can ask us for copies of your personal information (this is known as a Data Subject Access Request or SAR)
Right to rectification – you can ask us to rectify personal information you think is inaccurate
Right to erasure - you can ask us to erase your personal information
Right to restrict processing – you can ask us to restrict how we use your personal information
Right to object to processing – you can object to us using your personal information
Right to data portability – you can ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you.
Please note, these rights are not absolute and the requirement for UEA to comply with your request depends on the purpose for our processing. You do not need to pay any charge for exercising these rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.
How to contact us
Please contact UEA’s Data Protection Officer at dataprotection@uea.ac.uk if you would like any further information; if you wish to exercise any of your data rights; if you believe your personal information has been breached; or if you have any other concerns about how your personal information is being used by UEA.
If you are still not happy after you have spoken to us, you can contact the ICO:
Online - Contact us - public | ICO or by phone - ICO Helpline number: 0303 123 1113
Changes to this privacy notice
We keep our privacy notices under regular review.
This privacy notice was last updated on 04 June 2025.