Ute Walter

About Ute Walter

Ute Walter is associate professor (docent) in Culinary Arts and Meal Science at School of Hospitality, Culinary Arts and Meal Science at Campus Grythyttan, where she also is appointed as head of department since 2018. Ute is associate editor at Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism.

Research

Ute Walter’s research is conducted within the research field of Culinary Arts and Meal Science, often also called gastronomy. She has, as PI, led two Formas-granted projects and one project granted by BFUF. In an INTERREG-granted project she, together with co-researchers in Finland, designed the application and was responsible PI for the Swedish part of the project in the Västerbotten Region. Currently she participates in a Vinnova-granted project and in a project granted by SLU, both with a focus on the role of local food in communities’ self-sufficency. Ute Walters research could be described by the following areas.

Consumers’/guest’s meal experiences and experiences of meals in different contexts, and what they mean for consumers/guests. For example, good or bad experiences and drivers of these experiences, how meal experiences contribute to customers value creation, business travelers’ meals, which meal patterns business travel provokes and how travelers act in the sense of business travelers’ meal practices in order to get the meals they wish to have but are not always offered at the place they stay. This stream of research develops my earlier research on customer service experiences.

The significance of gastronomy for regional development in peripheral areas, with a focus on the northern regions in Sweden. Important aspects are the distribution of gourmet restaurants (fine dining restaurants), from central places to rural regions, based on facts from the Swedish restaurant guide “White Guide” from 2004-2016. Also interesting in this context is restaurants’ and small-scale food producers’ view on regional food products and on their own businesses. Culinary and gastronomic tourism related to the local (food) culture and regional development are other areas of interest. In this stream of my research Ute conducted two projects granted by the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development, Formas.

Ute Walter’s research is based on a genuine interest for gastronomy, restaurants and culinary craft in kitchens and front of house, meaning cooking and serving meals, with the goal to serve “good meals” for the many. She has extensive practical experience from the field of culinary arts, where she held different positions in both restaurant and kitchen. This experience is the basis for Ute’s research interest in the complexity of culinary crafts, and which consequences the complexity has for the practitioner. Together with a PhD candidate hospitality work is examined from a hospitality workers perspective, and also how hospitality work is communicated in job advertisements.  In collaboration with a post-doc at University College Copenhagen and Roskilde University, the development of dynamic hospitality work between different actors in retirement homes in Denmark is examined. A multi-method ethnographic approach characterizes the field work. Another important research area is how gastronomic higher education could contribute to knowledge-based development of society, which is examined in a PhD project. The starting point in this project is that gastronomic knowledge is based on a continuous interplay of practical knowledge, theory and aesthetics, especially regarding the creation of meals.

Ute Walter is part of the research group: Meals from a social and cultural perspective.

Teaching

Ute Walter has teaching experience from all levels of education within culinary arts and meal science. She has special experience in course and program design within the area of gastronomy and culinary arts based on a multi-disciplinary approach. Her teaching experience includes planning, lecturing, coordination and responsibility of whole semester courses where practice and distance-based learning are combined as well as supervision of students’ thesis work. Ute is continuously involved as main- or co-supervisor of PhD candidates.