Ute Walter

About Ute Walter

Ute Walter is a senior lecturer in Culinary Arts and Meal Science at School of Hospitality, Culinary Arts and Meal Science at Campus Grythyttan, where she also is head of department.

Research
Ute Walter’s research is conducted within the research field of Culinary Arts and Meal Science, often also called gastronomy. She has together with co-researchers conducted a systematic literature review focusing on gastronomy research/culinary arts research, granted by the Swedish Reserach Council Formas. Ute Walters research concerns three areas related to the culinary or gastronomic context.

1) Consumers’ meal experiences and experiences of meals in different contexts, and what they mean for consumers. 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 continues my own research on customer service experiences and was granted by BFUF (BFUF.se) as a PhD candidate project, https://bfuf.se/project/eating-out-a-study-of-visitors-activities-relating-to-food-and-meals/. 

2) 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 culinary restaurants (fine dining restaurants), from central places to rural regions, based on facts from the Swedish restaurant guide “White Guide” from 2004-2016. Focus is also on restaurants’ and small-scale food producers’ view on regional food products and on their own businesses. Important aspects are the relations between fine dining restaurants and rural food producers and the meaning of the relations from a gastronomic point of view. Culinary and gastronomic tourism related to the local culture and regional development are other areas of interest. This stream of my research was granted by the Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development, Formas.

3) Ute Walter’s research is based on a genuine interest for the area of gastronomy, restaurants and culinary craft in kitchens and front of house, meaning cooking and serving meals, with the goal to serve “good meals”. 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 Walter’s research interest in culinary craft and its complexity, but also which consequences the complexity has for the practitioner when for example working as a waiting employee/hospitality worker at restaurants. Together with a PhD candidate hospitality work will be examined from a hospitality workers perspective, and also how hospitality work is communicated in jobb advertisements.  In collaboration with a post-doc at University College Copenhagen and Roskilde University, the development of dynamic hospitality work between actors involved is examined. The research context is retirement homes in Denmark. Here a multi-method ethnographic approach characterises the field work. Ute Walter also contributes to a PhD project which examines how gastronomic university education contributes to knowledge-based development of society. The starting point 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 coordination and responsibility of whole semester courses where practice and distance-based learning are combined as well as supervision of students’ thesis work. Ute Walter is continuously involved as supervisor of PhD candidates.