The primary purpose of the current research is to demonstrate and interpret the effectiveness of implementing a plasma discharge to improve combustor dynamics and flame stability. Specifically, a nano-second pulsed plasma discharge (NSPD) was applied to a premixed methane/air dump combustor for mitigation of dynamic combustion instabilities with a minimal NOX penalty. As a result, up to ∼25dB noise reduction was observed in the presence of the NSPD. High speed imaging suggests that the NSPD relocated the flame stabilization point from the outer recirculation zone to the center zone. Due to the highly non-equilibrium temperature characteristic of the NSPD, the incremental increase of emissions in the presence of the discharge was minimal, typically around 0.5 EINOX, while the increase of combustion efficiency could be significant and on the order of ∼10%. A new control algorithm that measured pressure oscillation amplitude, and actuated with plasma power was developed. This algorithm does not require knowledge/measurement of pressure oscillation phase, and therefore, avoids challenges associated with convective and actuator phase delays. The impact of NSPD on swirl-stabilized flames was also investigated for swirl numbers from 0 to 0.33. It is shown that the relative effect of NSPD for dynamics reduction decreases with increasing swirl due to the inherent decrease in nascent flame dynamics. All observations in the current work suggest that the flame shape plays a central role in determining the degree of plasma effectiveness and that any noisy, outer recirculation zone stabilized flames will be significantly improved by this implementation of NSPD. Potential impacts for advanced combustor concepts with wider operability are also discussed.