Dor Shilton

Hello.

I am a writer and researcher living in Tel Aviv. I study human cultural evolution, with a particular focus on music and ritual.

I wrote my PhD thesis in Tel Aviv University on the cultural evolution of music, under the supervision of Eva Jablonka, Daniel Dor, and Ian Cross.

I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Cohn Institute in Tel Aviv University and a research affiliate at The School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford. I was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Edelstein Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and Medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Besides my academic work, I have written short films, short fiction, and several pieces for the Israeli press, which you can find below.

Research

Shilton, D., & Savage, P. E. (2024). Conflicting predictions in the cross-cultural study of music and sociality – Comment on “Musical engagement as a duet of tight synchrony and loose Interpretability” by Tal-Chen Rabinowitch. Physics of Life Reviews, 49, 7–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2024.02.004

Shilton, D., Passmore, S., & Savage, P. E. (2023). Group singing is globally dominant and associated with social context. Royal Society Open Science. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230562

Shilton, D., Jablonka, E. (2022) Rituals, Music, and the Landscape Metaphor. Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion. https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.22389

Shilton, D. (2022). Sweet Participation: The Evolution of Music as an Interactive Technology. Music & Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/20592043221084710

Shilton, D., Breski, M., Dor, D., & Jablonka, E. (2020). Human Social Evolution: Self-Domestication or Self-Control? Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00134

Shilton, D. (2019). Is Language Necessary for the Social Transmission of Lithic Technology? Journal of Language Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1093/jole/lzz004