This volume contains the proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians Satellite Conference on Algebraic and Combinatorial Approaches to Representation Theory, held August 12-16, 2010, at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India, and the follow-up conference held May 18-20, 2012, at the University of California, USA. It contains original research and survey articles on various topics in the theory of representations of Lie algebras, quantum groups and algebraic groups, including crystal bases, categorification, toroidal algebras and their generalisations, vertex algebras, Hecke algebras, Kazhdan-Lusztig bases, $q$-Schur algebras, and Weyl algebras.