Dr. Ute Wallenböck

My current research examines migration, identity, foodways, and state-mediated border regimes in Sinophone and Tibetophone settings. In my ongoing project on Tibetan food and identity in the diaspora, I use material culture, oral history, archival research, and ethnographic fieldwork to analyse how belonging, cultural continuity, and power structures are negotiated within diaspora and institutional environments.

Building upon this ongoing research, I extend this framework to Tibetan Muslims as a minority within the predominantly Buddhist Tibetan diaspora. I investigate how they negotiate Tibetanness along transregional migration routes—from the People’s Republic of China to Taiwan, Nepal, India, the Near East, and Europe—and how mobility, cultural memory, and institutional regulation shape identity, heritage practices, and minority positioning under conditions of asymmetrical dependency.

2018–2020
Master of Arts in Social Pedagogy and Social Management, Sigmund Freund University Vienna, Austria

2013–2017
PhD in Chinese Studies, University of Vienna, Austria

1995–2001
Magistra philosophicae in Chinese Studies with a minor in Tibetan and Buddhist Studies, University of Vienna, Austria

since 10/2024
Research Associate, Department of Mongolian and Tibetan Studies, University of Bonn, Germany

2019–2024
Assistant Professor for Chinese Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

2019–2022
Postdoc researcher, Management Board Member and Coordinator of the Reading Group Social Anthropology and Material Culture, "Sinophone Borderlands – Interaction at the Edges," Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic

2014–2019
Lecturer, Department of East Asian Studies/Sinology & Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies & Department of History (Global Studies), University of Vienna, Austria

2013–2017
University assistant, Department of East Asian Studies/Sinology, University of Vienna, Austria

2012–2013 
Research assistant, FWF-project: The Cultural History of the Western Himalaya from the 8th Century, University of Vienna, Austria

01/2024–04/2026
Tibetans in Taiwan: Food and Identity in a Historical and Contemporaneous Context. Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation (RG002-N-23)

01/2022–12/2022
Research on China’s ethnic groups in a global context. Specific research - support for student projects (Masaryk University Brno, MUNI/A/1319/2021)

01/2021–12/2021
From the Himalaya to the Hindukush - on a critical approach to Czech and Austrian research in Asian borderlands. Together with Martin Gaenszle (CIRDIS, University of Vienna Wien), Aktion Österreich-Tschechische Republik (89p7)

01/2020–12/2020
Cultural Transfer and Entangled Histories of the Tibeto-Mongols at the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands. Masaryk University Brno / Internal projects of the Faculty of Arts (MUNI/FF- DEAN/1561/2019)  

Monograph

• 2019. Die Bevölkerung am Sino-Tibetischen Grenzgebiet. Identitätskonstruktion der Tibet- Mongolen. Globalgeschichte und Global Studies, Vol. 1. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag.

Selected Articles

• 2026. "Preserving Tibetanness beyond Language: Food and Identity among Tibetan Muslims in Saudi Arabia." Asian Ethnicity January 2026: 1–21. Access
• 2025. "Representation of Tibetanness Through Food in Taiwan." International Journal of Taiwan Studies (published online ahead of print. Access
• 2025. "Catholic Missionary Reports on Food and Foodways in Tibet in the Seventeenth and Mid- Eighteenth Century." Journal of Jesuit Studies 12(3): 402–423. Access 
• 2024. "Navigating the Triangular Dynamics: Mongol-Russian Relations in the Context of China." CEIAS Insights, 27 February 2024. Access
• 2023. "Die tibetische Küche und Momo als Kulturgut in der Diaspora." Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde 2/2023: 73-91. DOI 10.33057/CHRONOS.1745/73-91.
• 2023. With Veronika Zikmundová. "Christian Missionaries’ Ethnographic Accounts of Diets and Foodways in the Area of Kokonor during the late 19th Century and Early Republican Time." Religio: Revue pro religionistiku 31(2): 259–279. Access
• 2023. With Julie Yu-Wen Chen. "Reincarnation System of Living Buddhas: A Taiwanese Perspective." Special Issue: Post-Dalai Lama Contingencies: 20th National Congress of the CCP and China-India Dynamics, Institute of Security and Development Policy (ISDP). 62–67. Access