<ul><li><div><div><span id="thisid"></span></div></div></li></ul>
$('#thisid').parent('li');
that obviously doesn't work, but how do I grab the li element? I don't want to use:
$('#this').parent().parent().parent();
I don't want to use it, because it can happen that there is just one div element, instead of two. In this case I would grab the ul element instead of the li element.
Answer
$('#thisid').parents('li');
// ^ plural!
Note that if you only want the first <li> element in the ancestry, you should use closest():
$('#thisid').closest('li');
// `closest()` is equivalent to (but performs better than)
$('#thisid').parents('li').eq(0);
$('#thisid').parents('li').first();