diff --git a/src/js/widgets/abstract/widget.js b/src/js/widgets/abstract/widget.js
index 46bd0d28e..d2a287d84 100644
--- a/src/js/widgets/abstract/widget.js
+++ b/src/js/widgets/abstract/widget.js
@@ -68,6 +68,9 @@ define([
       // "aff" is the name of the affiliations array that comes from solr
       doc.aff = doc.aff || [];
 
+      // remove html-encoding from affiliations
+      doc.aff = doc.aff.map(_.unescape);
+
       if (doc.aff.length) {
         doc.hasAffiliation = _.without(doc.aff, '-').length;
         // joining author and aff