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. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230562
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
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