He has a Masters Degree in Sociology from the University of Oslo and a Ph.D. in Media and Communication Theory from the University of Bergen. His main research interests have been in printed media - newspapers, journals, and books - and their transformation in the age of computers and the Internet. From 2000 to 2002 he led a project for Arts Council Norway in which a research team studied the potential impact of e-books on the Norwegian book industry. The results were presented in three reports in 2002, and since then Dr. Hillesund has published several scholarly articles on subjects such as e-books, digital reading, XML, digital text editions, and open access.