Julia Romanowska was born in Bydgoszcz, Poland, and came to Sweden as a political refugee in 1969. I first heard of her in Paris, and so it was not entirely by chance that we eventually met at a party given by a mutual friend.

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That meeting led to my being invited, on several occasions, to Scensalong Romanowska, where music and texts that seemed unable to inhabit the same room drove wedges into one another—and into the listeners. Fierce discussions, or a shaken silence, followed.

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This was my first encounter with what has come to be called the Shibboleth effect. It gave me an insight into how profoundly Julia had been shaped by her parents’ encounter with humanity’s greatest evil, and how this became the foundation of her research into human nature.

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Can human beings be moved towards greater humanity, courage and responsibility—towards daring to take a stand and intervene in the world?

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One late-autumn evening, I accompanied her by car to the Swedish Air Force’s Air Warfare Centre, far outside Stockholm. I had no idea what awaited me. I knew only that it concerned some form of experimental leadership development and that Julia had received funding from the Swedish Research Council for a major research study.

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In time, I was given a role in the study and was able to follow the work closely. Yet I was still somehow taken by surprise when, in October 2014, I was invited to the public defence of Julia’s doctoral thesis at the Department of Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet:

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Improving Leadership Through the Power of Words and Music.

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Julia had earned a PhD in Medical Science.

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But when had she found the time to write the thesis?

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At one point during Julia’s leadership programme, an enormous, round blueberry pie was bought. It made me think of the large, wide-brimmed hats Julia wore when we met in Humlegården or Kungsträdgården in central Stockholm.

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Her thoughts know no boundaries, yet I have never once encountered her outside Stockholm’s inner city. She is like the lady with the dog, but without the dog; like the heavily laden traveller, but without a bag; always in motion, yet with a rare capacity for stillness.

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Before research into the Shibboleth effect took over completely—a path that led, through the thesis, to the publication of Schibboleteffekten by Appell Förlag—music occupied much of Julia’s life.

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She trained as a percussionist and holds a master’s degree from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, with qualifications in solo performance and music education. In her apartment, I have seen an enormous marimba standing in a corner, although I have never heard her play it.

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And yet she has performed with both the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, as well as in productions at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm City Theatre and Drottningholm Palace Theatre.

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But one cannot be present for everything.

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That she also studied programming and systems development, and later worked as a business analyst, organisational consultant and leadership developer, is something else I did not witness with my own eyes, but had to discover through reading.

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Empathetic, with a profound belief in change and in art’s power to bring it about—that is how I would describe Julia Romanowska.

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Enigmatically self-contained, open to play, with many strings, though one can never be entirely certain which of them she is playing.

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A singular voice to which more and more are beginning to listen.

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Jan Henrik Swahn, Author and facilitator of reflection in the Shibboleth Experiment