Abstract
The development of student leadership in higher education increasingly requires understanding how leadership identities are constructed through social interactions, particularly in cross-cultural contexts. Drawing on DeRue’s (2011) adaptive leadership theory, this study explores how students claim and grant leader and follower identities through their social interactions and how both cultural backgrounds and institutional contexts shape these identities in a global university in China. Participants engaged in ongoing claiming and granting processes where leadership identities were negotiated through individual, relational, and collective social interactions. Some participants needed to build trust and validate their leadership capabilities (individual internalisation), while others emerged through recognition from followers (relational recognition). At the same time, some gained legitimacy through broader group endorsement (collective endorsement). By identifying key patterns in how students claim and grant leader identities across cultural boundaries, we provide insights that can help institutions better support student leadership development while bridging cultural differences.