Professor Rod Phillips was interviewed by several media organizations about the recently announced separation of Justin Trudeau and Sophie Grégoire Trudeau. Rod is a specialist in the history of marriage and divorce, and the media were interested in changing attitudes toward separation and divorce and the potential political impact of the Trudeaus’ separation. He did a live television interview on CBC News Network, live radio interviews on QR Radio Calgary and CKNW Vancouver, and interviews for Le Droit and Reuters. He also contributed a short piece to The Conversation, which was later translated into Indonesian for the Indonesian edition.
Although Rod is largely immersed in the history of wine, he is still firmly engaged with the history of the family. He is teaching a fourth-year seminar on the family in Early Modern Europe in 2023-24, and he has been Editor of the Journal of Family History, the journal of record in the field, since 1996. He is currently revising and updating his history of divorce, Putting Asunder, which was published by Cambridge University Press in 1988 and is still the standard history. At 700 pages, it was daunting to many readers, so Cambridge commissioned an abridgement (Untying the Knot, 1991, 260pp.) for a non-specialist readership in its prestigious Canto Series. The updated edition of Putting Asunder, to be published by Cambridge in 2025, will be titled A New History of Divorce. It will take account of the last 40 years of research and the significant changes in marriage, divorce, and the family over that time.