Dr. Navarun Varma holds the position of Director of Studies and Senior Lecturer (Resident Fellow) at Residential College 4, National University of Singapore (NUS). He teaches courses on Disaster Resilience, Water Governance in Asia, and Food Systems Resilience. In his Senior Seminar courses, there is a fieldwork component in ASEAN countries, delivered in collaboration with NUS Global’s partner Universities in the region, and funded through its Southeast Asia Friendship Initiative (SFI). Navarun also played a key role in launching the STEER Himalaya Program in the College. He sits on the editorial board of the International Journal of Water Resources Development (Taylor and Francis).

Navarun's academic interests lie in the fields of systems thinking and sustainability science, policy education, environmental policy, and water governance. His experience in fieldwork and policy research enables him to develop innovative teaching methods that help students connect theory with practice and learn inter-and-transdisciplinary themes and skills. He co-edited the book "Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education: Insights from Asia," which was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2022. Currently, he is working on Simulation-Based Learning techniques and participatory modeling with his students and collaborators from academia and the public

Before joining NUS in 2017, he worked as a Fellow at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Delhi, India. In 2014, he served as the Principal Investigator for an Asia Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN) funded project on 'Adaptive governance approach for urban and rural floods in India'. From 2014 to 2017, he was the Co-Principal Investigator at TERI for a CARIAA-funded project named HIAWARE, focusing on interdisciplinary research and policy advisory in South Asia's major river basins - Indus, Ganga, and Brahmaputra. He was part of a team advising the Assam State Government in India on designing its State Action Plan for Climate Change (SAPCC).

Navarun enjoys traveling to new places, experiencing different cultures, reading non-fiction, and watching movies. He is passionate about teaching and learning, and he strongly believes in the famous quote by the philosopher Immanuel Kant: "Perception without conception is blind; conception without perception is empty."

Dr. Navarun, together with his co-author Dr Sreeja Nair from LKYSPP, won the 2024 Outstanding Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Book Award from the Washington DC-based Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs and Administration (NASPAA). The award recognises the outstanding contribution of the book “Emerging Pedagogies for Policy Education: Insights from Asia”, which includes chapters by RC4 colleagues Dr Naviyn and Dr Lynette Tan, as well as RC4’s founding master A/P Laksh. Parts of the book draw on pedagogies (in and out of classroom) developed at RC4. The award was given out at the 2024 NASPAA Annual Conference (23-25 Oct 2024).