In this paper, we propose a class of adaptive multiresolution (also called the sparse grid) ultra-weak discontinuous Galerkin (UWDG) methods for solving some nonlinear dispersive wave equations including Korteweg--de Vries (KdV) equation and its two-dimensional generalization, Zakharov--Kuznetsov (ZK) equation. The UWDG formulation, which relies on repeated integration by parts, was proposed Kd...