Dor Shilton

Hello.

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

I am interested in how novel interactive technologies changed human social structure during our evolutionary history, and how the relationship between music and social structure changed over time.

I wrote my PhD thesis at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas in Tel Aviv University, under the supervision of Eva Jablonka, Daniel Dor, and Ian Cross.

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

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