UBC Pop Culture Cluster

The Pop Culture Cluster supports academic and public-facing scholarship on popular media and popular culture at UBC.

The UBC Pop Culture Cluster is located at UBC Vancouver, which is situated on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. The land it is situated on has always been a place of learning for the Musqueam, who for millennia have passed on their culture, history, and traditions from one generation to the next on this site.

News

Feb 25, 2026

Arctic Winter Games Artist Spotlight: Cole Pauls

The UBC Pop Culture Cluster, Critical Play Lab, and the Indigenous Comics Initiative will set out for Whitehorse, Yukon, on March 8, 2026 with a dozen Indigenous artists and a support team for the Arctic Winter Games. Here's a spotlight on artist Cole Pauls.

Announcements, Comics Studies, Critical Play News, News

Jan 27, 2026

Call for Indigenous Cartoonists: Xwémalhkwu (Homalco) Heroes Tribal Journey Indigenous Comics Initiative Project

Special Call for Indigenous Cartoonists Project Title: Xwémalhkwu (Homalco) Heroes: Tribal Journey Indigenous Comics Initiative Project  Following the success of Xwémalhkwu Hero Stories: A Graphic Novel (2024)—a landmark project that brought Elders’ voices to new generations through comic art —TSL Enterprises Ltd, the Xwémalhkwu (Homalco) First Nation (HFN), Education without Borders, and the UBC Comics […]

Announcements, Call for Artists, Comics Studies

Jan 19, 2026

Meet the Indigenous Comics Artists & Game Designers Headed to the Arctic Winter Games with the Pop Culture Cluster

The Pop Culture Cluster, with its partner project Visual Storytelling in the Indigenous North, are traveling to the Yukon with six Indigenous comics artists and three Indigenous game designers to the 2026 Arctic Winter Games (AWG) to document and create AWG-inspired artworks.

Announcements, Comics Studies, Critical Play News, News

Jan 06, 2026

Meet the PhD CollAB(E)Rators!

A central component of the PopCC‘s Arts-Based Research initiative is the PhD Collab project, Arts-Based Interventions in Graduate Research, recently funded through a two-year pilot program from Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies (G+PS). Meet the faculty and graduate students who make up the PhD Collab project.

Announcements

Upcoming Events

• Feb 25th

  2026

  Power of Play

  5:00 pm

• Feb 27th

  2026

  Playing with Creative Method: Video Games in Intersectional Research

  12:30 pm

• Mar 2nd

  2026

  Pop Pedagogies Lightning Talks

  12:00 pm

• Mar 5th

  2026

  Game Mod Workshop: Use traditional card games to tell your story

  3:30 am

• Mar 14th

  2026

  TCTC 2026 – Indigenous Game Design and Decolonial Play: Lessons from the Arctic Winter Games

  2:00 pm

• Mar 15th

  2026

  TCTC 2026 – UBC’s Critical Play Lab: A Place for Playful Research

  1:00 pm

• Mar 17th

  2026

  Understanding Through Comics | Gender & 2SLGBTQIA+ Equity

  12:30 pm

• Mar 17th

  2026

  Pop Pedagogy & Critical Play Workshop

  2:00 pm

• Mar 24th

  2026

  Pop Pedagogy & Critical Play Workshop

  2:00 pm