(Book Review) Embodying Intercultural Capacities: The Pedagogic Impact of Study Abroad

Study abroad is often treated as a transformative journey that will automatically give students a new way of seeing the world.Embodying Intercultural Capacities: The Pedagogic Impact of Study Abroad by Kate Naidu asks some critical questions: does studying abroad really help students develop intercultural capacities?If so, how, and under what conditions, do such capacities actually take shape?Drawing on a longitudinal study with Australian students in Indonesia, Naidu (2025) develops the term "interculturalization" (p. 5) to understand the slow and uneven process through which students learn to work on themselves as they navigate cultural differences.She argues that intercultural capacities are not a taken-for-granted by-product of immersion in a host country but are developed through a cumulative pedagogic process that requires active labour of both teaching and learning.This shift offers a critical lens for understanding student mobility, moving beyond what students learn to how their capacities gradually take form.The book is situated within the context of the Australian Consortium for In-Country Indonesian Studies (ACICIS), focusing on Australian university students undertaking semester-long programs in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.This setting represents a trajectory that is much less addressed in the literature on international student mobility where students from developed countries pursue studies in developing countries, including in Asia.After setting out the research landscape in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 addresses the methodological challenge of "capturing the intercultural" (p.21).Naidu tracked 16 undergra-