In 2008, I began a four-year doctoral research project with urban explorers in London. Urban explorers are groups of people interested in sneaking into, and often photographing, off-limits architecture, trespassing into abandoned buildings, infrastructure systems and under-construction skyscrapers. Given the nature of what they do, conducting research with them was always going to require a level of deep participation; passive “observers” are swiftly identified, censured and disregarded in this community. I chose to undertake ethnographic work in the tradition of the Chicago School of Sociology. What followed over the next few years was, by any stretch of the imagination, an incredible series of events that concluded two weeks ago with a qualified victory for me and eight of my project participants after beating a charge of “conspiracy to commit criminal damage”, which carries with it a 10-year maximum jail sentence. Elated as we were to be out of the dock, this was a victory with sombre caveats for me as a researcher.