Varda Sussman graduated from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1956, earning her BA and MA degrees. She studied for a year at the Oriental School of Archaeology in Chicago toward her Ph.D., but decided to return to Israel and work at the Israel Department of Antiquities in Jerusalem. She participated in various excavations and became the Curator responsible for cataloguing and storing archaeological artifacts, establishing a system of registration and retrieval that enabled their availability to the academic world as a source of research. After retiring, Varda taught at Bar Ilan University, imparting her broad knowledge about the development of pottery oil lamps. In addition to publishing many articles on oil lamps, she has focused on publishing catalogues, by historical period, of the present-day Israel Antiquities Authority's collection of oil lamps.