Dr Dor Shilton
Research Affiliate
Dor Shilton studies human cultural evolution and the relationship between music, ritual, modes of religiosity, and collective agency. His research combines evolutionary and anthropological theory grounded in cross-cultural ethnographic data to answer questions such as:
* What makes humans capable of large-scale cooperation?
* How did music-making, as a new form of communication and interaction, shape human evolution?
* Why is music cross-culturally associated with religious rituals?
Selected publications
Shilton, D., Passmore, S., & Savage, P. E. (2023). Group singing is globally dominant and associated with social context. Royal Society Open Science.
Shilton, D. (2022). Sweet Participation: The Evolution of Music as an Interactive Technology. Music & Science.
Shilton, D., Breski, M., Dor, D., & Jablonka, E. (2020). Human Social Evolution: Self-Domestication or Self-Control? Frontiers in Psychology.