Noetherian properties in representation theory

The goal of this expository article, based on a lecture I gave at the 2016 ICRA, is to explain some recent applications of “categorical symmetries” in topology and algebraic geometry with an eye toward twisted commutative algebras as a unifying framework. The general idea is to find an action of a category on the object of interest, prove some niceness property, like finite generation, and then deduce consequences from the general properties of the category. The key in these cases is to prove that the representation theory of this category is locally noetherian, and we will discuss an outline for such proofs.