[Discussions on research lines in the National Nursing Research Seminars, 1979-2011]

The article aimed to recover historical and synthesis of discussions within the National Seminar on Nursing Research (SENPE) about research lines, materializing in this context, the construction of nursing knowledge. This is a documentary research, whose sources were the Annals of sixteen SENPE, conducted from 1979 to 2011. It was observed that the discussion on the research lines was a constant concern in those Seminars, although with different gradations, from its genesis to the present time. The scenario configures itself with the inclusion of adverse consequences of the quantitative production and dissemination of studies without necessarily articulated them with a praxis purpose. The concerns externalized in the trajectory analyzed inaugurate the search for praxis in nursing to contribute to the discussion of the research from the perspective of the political nature of the construction, dissemination and evaluation of knowledge, from the understanding of the contradictions inherent in this process.